procession, the coffin decorated with the images of snakes, the chief mourner in a hat of coarse hemp as the women howl with the yellow wind through the electric wires. The soil blows, the sun pales as I lie among the corpses. Sixty Calmotin, sixty-one. Chinese officers stuff their mouths with melon under the huge Sun in the Blue Sky flag atop the peeling red-lacquered gate. We watch them from behind our sandbags. Their soldiers in their grey uniforms throng the streets, overturning stalls and stealing goods. We watch them from behind our barbed wire. They chew food as they saunter around the city. We watch them in our khaki uniforms. They spit skin and bones into the faces of the local Chinese. We watch them with our machine guns. They love plunder, they love violence. A shot rings out. They knock over altars, they yank open drawers. Another shot. Beggars and coolies run towards the shots. The Chinks are robbing the Japanese. Women with bound feet and children with plaits flee. The Japs are raping the Chinese. Two grey armoured vehicles speed up the street. The Chinks are murdering the Japanese. Nationalist cavalrymen gallop south through the city. The Japs are murdering the Chinese. Bullets fly from the second-floor windows of Western buildings. Artillery sounds. Barefoot Japanese men run down the streets, their shirts unbuttoned. Cannons fire. Prostitutes pour out of the Yung-hsien-li district. Windows shatter. A woman in red satin falls to the ground. My son said he would cut his own throat! Houses are burnt. Mine too! Refugees cower in halls. A true Japanese man! Men lose their wives. Run! Mothers lose their children. Hide! A wire birdcage lies trampled in the street. No! This is how it starts, among the corpses. Seventy Calmotin, seventy-one. The disarmed soldiers in their grey uniforms groan and cry like animals, their hands tied behind their backs in the barbed-wire stockade. Hundreds of them, sat on the ground before the fixed bayonets of just five of our unit as our artillery thunders on until dawn. Then there is only smoke, now only rumours. Two hundred and eighty Japanese settlers massacred, say the Japanese newspapers. Japanese women stripped naked, treated with unspeakable savagery, and then butchered. Tales of stakes thrust into vaginas, arms broken with clubs, and their eyes gouged out. Houses looted, schools burnt. The mutilated corpses of three Japanese are unearthed in a field northeast of the railway bridge, six more by the water tank. Their ears have been sliced off, their stomachs stuffed with stones. Eighty Calmotin, eighty-one. Now the airplanes appear, dropping black bombs on Chinese districts and the street fighting ends. The air is thick with flies. For two days we drink sake and wander through the city. The stench of rotten apricots. We count the Chinese corpses but soon give up. Dogs wag their tails among the dead. We take photographs but run out of film. Beggars sleep among the bones. We find Chinese families still hiding in their houses. Two hundred and eighty Japanese settlers massacred, say the Japanese newspapers. We separate the men from the women. Japanese women stripped naked, treated with unspeakable savagery, and then butchered. The young from the old. Tales of stakes thrust into vaginas, arms broken with clubs, and their eyes gouged out. Masaki, Banzai! Daddy,
Tokyo, 87°, cloudy
Night is day. I open my eyes. No more pills. Day is night. I can hear the rain falling. Hide from sight. Night is day. I can see the sun shining. No more pills. Day is night. I close my eyes. The corpses of the dead. Night is day. The good detective visits the crime scene one hundred times. No more pills. Day is night. The white morning light behind the black Shiba trees. In the long, long grasses. Night is day. The black trees that have seen so much. No more pills. Day is night. The black branches that have borne so much. The dead leaves and weeds. Night is day. The black leaves that have come again. No more pills. Day is night. To grow and to fall and to grow again. Another country’s young. Night is day. I turn away. No more pills. Day is night. I walk away from the scene of the crime. Another country’s dead. Night is day. Beneath the Black Gate. No more pills. Day is night. The dog still waits. Another country. Now night is day.
*
They are all awake now. No Fujita. They are all hungry still. No Fujita. They are all waiting for me. No Fujita. Hattori, Takeda, Sanada and Shimoda yawning and scratching their heads. No Fujita. Nishi, Kimura and Ishida with their notebooks and their pencils out –
No Fujita. No Fujita. No Fujita. No Fujita …
‘By now you all know that the suspect named Kodaira Yoshio has confessed to the murder of Midorikawa Ryuko,’ I tell them. ‘But, unfortunately for us, Kodaira Yoshio claims to know nothing about the second body, our body. Now I don’t believe him…’
No Fujita. No Fujita. No Fujita …
‘But first, we need to find her name…’
No Fujita. No Fujita …
‘Now we know she was alive enough on the nineteenth of July to clip an advertisement from a newspaper,’ I tell them. ‘And we know that Dr. Nakadate estimates she was murdered sometime between the twentieth and the twenty-seventh of July…’
No Fujita. No Fujita. No Fujita. No Fujita …
‘Now remember, investigation is footwork; so let’s take these dates and a description of the suspect Kodaira Yoshio and go back to Shiba to ask if anyone has seen a man like this?’
No Fujita. No Fujita. No Fujita …
‘With a girl dressed like ours?’
No Fujita. No Fujita …
‘Between these dates?’
No Fujita.
*
I take a different route back up to Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters. Ton-ton. The air is more humid than ever. Ton-ton. The hammering louder than ever. Ton-ton. I want to wash my face. Ton-ton. I want to wash my hands. Ton-ton. I step inside the Hibiya Public Hall. Ton-ton. I wish I hadn’t. Ton-ton. It is the inaugural convention of the Congress of Industrial Unions. Ton-ton. The now-shabby lobby of this once-grand hall is filled with counter-intelligence agents and military policemen, foreign journalists and Japanese snitches, their paperclips in their lapels and an extra ration of cigarettes. Ton-ton. Young men selling Akahata. Ton-ton. Young men whistling ‘The Red Flag’. Ton-ton. I want to wash my face. Ton-ton. I want to wash my hands. Ton-ton. I walk through the Shinchū Gun armbands and the press-corps badges. Ton-ton. The auditorium is dark and airless, packed with men standing and sweating, either staring or shouting at the large stage. Ton-ton. No cigarettes in here. Ton-ton. No extra rations. Ton-ton. The stage is decorated with banners demanding that workers fight for a forty-hour week, oppose mass dismissals and battle against the remnants and resurgence of militarism and nationalism. Ton-ton. In front of the banners sit a dozen men behind a long table, all of them tall, all of them lean, all of them bespectacled. Ton-ton. They bow deeply before the hall. Ton-ton. They introduce themselves. Ton-ton. They bow again. Ton-ton. They sit back down. Ton-ton. Then the speeches begin. Ton-ton. These tall, lean and bespectacled men unbuttoning their jackets and loosening their ties, clenching their fists and waving their papers –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
‘There are those that say, even many here in this hall today, both Japanese and Occupier, that labour should not be militant, that labour should not fight. But I ask you today, is it not our democratic right to organize and defend our jobs? Is it not our democratic right to teach our fellow workers to tell an enemy from a friend?’
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
‘The Yoshida government and the American Occupiers declare that since Japan is now suffering from the consequences of defeat, all internal differences must be forgotten, all labour disputes postponed. But when have capitalists ever welcomed disputes?’
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
‘The Yoshida government is a zaibatsu government. It is a government hostile to labour sponsored by an occupation hostile to labour. Things are the same now as they have always been –
‘New uniforms but the same old politics!’
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
‘The tactics of the present campaign against members of the Communist Party by the Yoshida government and the American Occupiers are the same tactics that were used by the fascists and the militarists during the war years. It shows the meaninglessness of their words, words such as freedom, such as rights, such as democracy…’
‘The red flag, wraps the bodies of our dead…’
‘Labour gives capital everything. Capital gives labour nothing!’
‘Before the corpses turn cold, the blood dyes the flag…’
‘All workers must unite! All workers must fight!’
Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I find the bathroom. The toilet. The sink –
I wash my face and I wash my hands –
In the warm, rust-coloured water –
I leave the building –
Ton-ton …
Outside the Hibiya Hall, a former communist is stood upon a soapbox. Ton-ton. First the man weeps as he recalls the political folly of his youth. Ton-ton. Then the man rails as he denounces birth control as the Victors’ way to sterilize and eradicate the Yamato race. Ton-ton. Now the man calls for three banzai cheers for the Emperor –
‘Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!’ he screams, stood upon his box against a wall still decorated with a mural of a Japanese bomber –
‘Let’s Boost Plane Production for an All-out Attack!’
There are red flags in the trees of Hibiya Park –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I want to wash my face again –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I want to wash my hands –
In the Year of the Dog.
*
I am late, again. Chief Inspector Adachi is standing on the steps outside Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters. Inspector Adachi is looking for me. Adachi is waiting for me. He is asking me, ‘So where is Detective Fujita today then, Detective Inspector Minami?’
‘I just left Detective Fujita back at Atago,’ I tell him. ‘Detective Fujita is leading the Shiba investigation in my absence.’
Inspector Adachi asks, ‘So you say you’ve just come from Atago, have you? And you say you’ve just seen Detective Fujita?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘We’ve just finished our morning meeting.’
Adachi smiles. Adachi asks me, ‘And you saw Fujita?’
‘Yes,’ I tell him again. ‘Why are you asking me?’
Adachi smiles again. Adachi takes his time now. ‘Do you remember the body we pulled out of the Shiba Canal…?’
‘It was only yesterday,’ I say. ‘And I was there.’
‘Well, it was the body of a journalist,’ says Adachi. ‘A journalist who used different names for different papers, sometimes writing for Minpo, sometimes for Minshū Shimbun, even Akahata.’
‘Really?’ I ask him. ‘And so what was his name?’
‘You don’t know?’ asks Adachi. ‘Really? ’
I curse you. I curse you. I curse you …
‘Why would I know his name?’
I curse you and I curse myself…
‘Well, just how many journalists do you know who write for three different papers under three different names, inspector?’
I smile. I say, ‘I try not to know any journalists.’
‘Not one called Kato Kotaro of Akahata?’
I laugh. I say, ‘I’ve never heard of him.’
‘Or Suzuki Nobu of Minshū Shimbun?’
I shrug my shoulders. I say, ‘No.’
‘Or Hayashi Jo of Minpo?’
I swallow. I say, ‘No.’
I curse myself…
‘Well, that’s very strange,’ says Adachi. ‘Because late last night I went to the Minpo offices to ask them about this Hayashi Jo, about him being found in the Shiba Canal, about him being nailed and bound to a door, about him being drowned face down and why they think that might be and do you know what the first thing they said to me was? The first thing they said to me was, not again…’
‘Not again,’ I repeat. ‘What did they mean, not again?’
‘That’s exactly what I asked them,’ laughs Adachi. ‘And do you know what they told me? They told me I was the third policeman to have visited the Minpo offices in the last three days…’
I swallow again as Inspector Adachi says –
‘The third one asking after Hayashi Jo…’
I ask, ‘What do you want from me?’
Chief Inspector Adachi steps closer. Chief Inspector Adachi whispers, ‘I don’t want anything from you, inspector, except your gratitude that it was me who pulled this case and not anyone else. But when you do see your Detective Fujita, please send him to me…’
I nod then I ask, ‘But why do you want to see Fujita?’
‘Because Detective Fujita was the first policeman to have visited the Minpo offices in the last three days, that’s why…’
I curse him. I swallow. I curse myself. I ask –
‘And so who was the second policeman?’
Ishida. Ishida. Ishida. Ishida. Ishida …
‘You tell me, corporal,’ says Adachi. ‘You tell me.’
*
I need answers; I need to find Fujita and I need to see Ishida: I want to know how Adachi got this case; I want to know who identified Hayashi’s body. But today is not the day to ask the chief these questions. Today is not a day for talk; today there is no talk of fresh purges; today there is no talk of the Tokyo trials; today there is no talk of SCAP reforms; no talk of better guns; no talk of new uniforms. Because the chief has heard about last night’s party; the good food; their glasses raised; the songs sung; their songs of victory –
‘The suspect Kodaira Yoshio has confessed to the murder of Midorikawa Ryuko and I know many of you think that this means that the case is now closed,’ says the chief. ‘But that is not true. The statements in the confession need to be verified. The addresses of the places the suspect Kodaira claims to have lived and worked need to be checked. And we still have one unidentified body –
‘Inspector Minami, if you would please…’
‘The suspect Kodaira denies any knowledge of the second body found at Shiba. Dr. Nakadate, however, believes this crime to be the work of the same person responsible for the murder of Midorikawa Ryuko, that is to say that Dr. Nakadate believes Kodaira to have been responsible for both crimes…’
‘And you, Inspector Minami?’ asks Chief Inspector Adachi. ‘Do you agree with Dr. Nakadate?’
‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘I believe that if we can find the evidence or, better still, if we can identify the body and then find witnesses or circumstances that can connect Kodaira to the victim or even to the time we know she was murdered then, faced with the evidence, I believe he will again confess.’
‘And if not?’
‘The murders and rapes of two young women would bring Kodaira the death sentence,’ I say. ‘And he knows it. But only one, in the circumstances in which he has confessed, probably not…’
‘Kodaira murdered his father-in-law,’ says Kai. ‘Midorikawa will be his second murder conviction. Kodaira will hang this time.’
‘Kodaira is an old hand at this,’ I say. ‘If he thinks he can still escape the rope, he has no reason to confess to anything else.’
The chief asks, ‘Do you have any new leads at all on the identity of the second body, Inspector Minami?’
‘A newspaper advertisement seeking staff for a Salon Matsu in Kanda was found in one of the pockets of her dress,’ I tell them. ‘It was clipped from the Asahi of the nineteenth of July and this obviously led us to visit this Salon Matsu in Kanda. Unfortunately, because we had only her clothing to describe, the staff were unable to identify her or confirm whether or not she had been to the salon. However, they suggested we go out to the International Palace…’
Better off dead. Better off dead. Better off dead …
‘The International Palace?’ repeats the chief. ‘Out near Funabashi? Why did they suggest that you ask after her out there?’
‘Ninety per cent of their applicants used to work there.’
‘But that doesn’t mean that this one did,’ says Kai.
I shrug. ‘And it doesn’t mean that she didn’t.’
‘Haven’t the Shinchū Gun placed it off-limits?’ asks Chief Inspector Adachi. ‘Won’t we need clearance…?’
The chief nods. The chief looks at his watch. The chief says, ‘Report back here in three hours, inspector.’
*
I need answers; I need to find Fujita and I need to see Ishida. Chiku-taku. I have to go back to Atago. Chiku-taku. I have to find Fujita. Chiku-taku. I have to see Ishida. Chiku-taku. I have three hours before I have to go out to the International Palace. Chiku-taku. But I need to find Fujita. Chiku-taku. I need to speak to Ishida. Chiku-taku. But first I have to have a drink. Chiku-taku. First I need a drink –
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku …
The bar is in the basement of a three-storey reinforced concrete shell. Chiku-taku. Each room above the bar has been blown out so now only exposed steel girders dangle where once there were walls and floors. Chiku-taku. The bar itself was once one of the government-run People’s Bars; bars that opened just once or twice a week during the war to sell cheap domestic whisky, bottles of beer and the low-grade sake known as bakudan; bars where people queued for hours and hours; bars that were meant to lift our morale –
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku …
This bar is now back in private hands, now open twenty-four hours a day but it still sells only cheap domestic whisky, bottles of beer and bakudan sake and people still queue for hours to have their morale lifted. Chiku-taku. But this morning there are only two other customers at the counter; a middle-aged woman dressed in red, smelling of strong perfume and smoking Lucky Strikes and an old man in a shabby dark suit who keeps taking out his pocket watch and winding it up and putting it away again, then taking it out and winding it up and putting it away again, taking it out –
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku …
There are ugly sores on the skin of the old man’s hands. Chiku-taku. He has had no vitamins and now he has beriberi. Chiku-taku. I down my glass of clouded bakudan. Chiku-taku. I feel it explode in my throat and in my belly. Chiku-taku. I cough and now I ask the old man, ‘Is your watch broken, sir?’
‘I was on the train,’ he says. ‘On the day of the surrender, when a woman standing in the aisle ahead of me lost her balance and the large box tied to her back hit me right here in my chest and stopped this watch in my pocket dead…’
Now he shows me the watch –
It says twelve o’clock.
*
I need to find Fujita. I need to see Ishida. I need to speak to Ishida. Detectives Nishi and Kimura are back at their borrowed desks. Detectives Nishi and Kimura are writing up statements –
I ask them, ‘Did you get anything at all?’
They shake their heads. They bow –
‘Have you seen Detective Ishida?’
They shake their heads again –
‘Right then,’ I tell them. ‘Nishi, I want you to come with me out to the International Palace and Kimura, I want you to find Ishida and, when you do, bring him back here and keep him here but don’t let him speak to Chief Inspector Adachi until I’ve spoken to him first. And the same goes for Detective Fujita if he comes back at all…’
*
On the fifteenth of August last year, minutes after the Emperor had surrendered, the Metropolitan Police Board summoned the presidents of the seven major entertainment guilds in Tokyo. These included the heads of the restaurant, cabaret, geisha and brothel associations. The chief of the Metropolitan Police Board feared the Victors would soon be upon Japan, here to rape our wives and our daughters, our mothers and our sisters. The chief wanted a ‘shock absorber’ and so the chief had a proposal. The chief suggested that the heads of the restaurant, cabaret, geisha and brothel associations form one central association to cater for all the needs and amusement of the Victors. The chief promised this new association that it would not lack for funds –
The Recreation and Amusement Association was born.
Recruits were found or bought among the ruins of the cities and the countryside. Dancehalls and houses of entertainment were reopened or created overnight, the biggest and most infamous of them all being the International Palace, a former munitions factory out beyond the eastern boundaries of Tokyo. Five of the workers’ dormitories were converted into brothels. Some of the old management stayed on to administer the new business, some of the prettier girls stayed on to service the new customers, the Victors –
Because only the Victors are welcome at the Palace –
Only Victors allowed to make the Willow Run –
But the toll is heavy and the turnover high –
Most of the first girls were hospitalized –
Many of the rest committed suicide –
Better off dead …
The second set of girls were geishas and prostitutes, barmaids and waitresses, frequent adulterers and sexual deviants, girls built of stronger stuff, too strong for some because the International Palace was placed off-limits this spring –
Supposedly.
Our chief has got the clearance for Detective Nishi and me to go out to the International Palace. Our chief has even found Nishi and me a ride out there in the back of a Victors’ truck. In the back with Larry, Moe and Curly, three well-fed and well-scrubbed GI Joes –
They offer us chewing gum and Nishi chews their gum. They offer us cigarettes and Nishi smokes their cigarettes. They talk about their lucky days and Nishi nods and laughs along. They talk about hitting the jackpot, about kids in candy stores, about Christmases that come early and Christmases that all come at once, and Nishi is nodding and laughing along, shouting out, ‘Merry Christmas!’
He is a good Jap, a good monkey. He is a tame Jap …
I do not chew their gum. I do not smoke their cigarettes. I do not nod or laugh along. I do not shout, ‘Merry Christmas! ’
Because I am the bad Jap. Bad monkey.
The Victors’ truck drives southeast, out towards Funabashi, out of the city until the ruins become fields, the burnt black earth now barren brown soil, until we can see the series of two-storey barrack buildings rising up ahead, until we can read the signs in English:
OFF-LIMITS — VD. OFF-LIMITS — VD …
More smaller signs, hundreds of them, dabbed in red paint the closer we come, thousands of them, on the fences, on the gates:
VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD VD …
The Victors’ truck goes through the open barbed-wire gates and sounds its horn as it pulls into a small, dusty courtyard, a crowd of men and women pouring out of the buildings to greet us –
I have been here before, seen these places before …
Little Japanese men in white waiters’ tunics without trays, tall Japanese women in Western dresses without stockings, all beaming and bowing to us, clapping and calling out to us –
These places, these buildings, these women …
‘All clean, all clean, all clean…’
‘Very clean, very clean…’
‘All cheap…’
Now the tall women lead the driver and Larry, Moe and Curly off towards one of the dormitory buildings, the Victors’ hands already up their skirts, leaving just the little men in their white waiters’ tunics standing with Nishi and me in the dirt of the yard –
I am ashamed to be a policeman, ashamed to be Japanese …
I ask to speak to the manager and the waiters disappear –
I am ashamed to be Japanese, ashamed to be me …
The Japanese manager steps out of another of the buildings. The manager straightens his tie. The manager flattens his greasy hair. He bows. He hands me his heavy, embossed meishi —
The manager is another oily little man –
Just another tame collaborator …
I tell him why we are here. I tell him about Shiba Park. I tell him about a murdered girl aged seventeen to eighteen years old. She is better off dead. I tell him about a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress and a white half-sleeved chemise. She is better off dead. I tell him about a pair of dyed-pink socks and white canvas shoes with red rubber soles. She is better off dead. I tell him about the Salon Matsu. She is better off dead …
The manager shakes his head but he wants to help us because we came here in a Victors’ truck. Because he thinks we have connections to the Shinchū Gun. Because he thinks we have influence. Because he thinks we can help him to get this place reopened –
This place I have seen before. I have been before … He takes us on a tour.
He takes us to the infirmary –
If she was here, then she’s better off dead …
In the infirmary. A huge, bare room lined with tatami mats. Twelve girls lie perspiring on the floor under thick comforters –
They all hide their faces from us, all but one –
I squat down. I smile. ‘How old are you?’
‘Nineteen years old.’
‘How long have you been here?’
‘Six months now.’
‘And before that?’
‘I was a clerk.’
‘Why do you stay here?’
‘I owe them money.’
‘How much do you owe them?’
‘Ten thousand yen.’
‘Ten thousand yen? What for?’
‘The clothes I’ve bought.’
‘Bought from where?’
‘The shop here.’
‘What about your family? Do they know where you are?’
‘I haven’t any,’ she says. ‘They died in the air raids.’
‘You do know that this place is off-limits now?’
She nods her head. She says, ‘Yes.’
‘Because General MacArthur has banned prostitution?’
She shakes her head. She says, ‘I didn’t know that.’
I nod. I squeeze her hand. I look into her eyes. I start to tell her she should leave here and go back home. But then I stop –
‘We are her only home now,’ says the manager.
He resumes our tour. He takes us to the clinic –
If this was where she was bound …
In the clinic. The girls are examined once a week. In the chairs. Every week. Each chair has a tiny curtain to conceal the faces of the girls from the doctor. Two shallow pools in which each girl must bathe every other day. Every other day, every single week –
‘Very clean,’ says the manager –
She’s better off dead …
He takes us on a tour. He takes us to the dining room –
In the dining room. Here the girls are fed. In shifts –
‘Two good meals a day,’ boasts the manager.
He resumes our tour. He takes us to the ballroom –
In the ballroom. There are a hundred Japanese girls. In Occidental gowns. Nothing underneath. Beneath red paper streamers that hang in the heat from the ceiling. They dance with each other to scratched and deafening records relayed through a battery of amplifiers. Back and forth across the floor in downtrodden heels or scruffy school plimsolls. They push each other. To the distorted American jazz. In the ballroom. Back and forth –
‘They are all very pretty, aren’t they?’ says the manager. ‘But inside they are all very sad and they are all very lonely because General MacArthur won’t let them make friends with GIs any more and so the GIs are homesick and lonely too…’
She’s better off dead …
He takes us on a tour. He takes us to the girls’ rooms –
The girls’ rooms. In the two-storey barracks. Fifty cubicles to a building. Each tiny room separated by a low partition. Thin curtains or sheets for doors. Each entrance with a sign written in a child’s crayon, a sign that says, Well Come, Kimi. Well Come, Haruko …
Well Come Mitsuko. Yori. Kazuko. Yoshie. Tatsue …
Well Come Hiroko. Yoshiko. Ryuko. Yuki …
Inside each small cubicle is a futon and a comforter, a little make-up mirror on the floor, the odd yellowing photograph. The air humid and heavy with the smell of antiseptic –
Better off dead. Better off dead …
At the top of each stairway is one long, narrow room with a painted sign beside the door which says, in English and in Katakana, PRO Station; this is where the Victors get their prophylactics –
The smell of antiseptic. The taste of antiseptic …
Beside this room are two smaller rooms without windows where the girls rest after each visit from the Victor –
Antiseptic. Antiseptic. Antiseptic …
The tour has finished now –
The sights all seen –
Better off dead.
Back outside the two-storey barracks, the manager leads us down one of the covered passageways between the buildings to the company store where the girls buy their cheap cosmetics and their shoddy clothes on borrowed money at expensive prices –
The store is empty. The store is dead –
My heart empty. My heart dead …
‘Now you must meet the officers of our union here,’ says the manager. ‘It is a real union. It is very democratic. Very democratic. Please tell your American bosses this.’
The manager disappears inside the company store but quickly returns, bringing out with him three young women –
Two in Western suits. One in a kimono –
‘These ladies are the officers of the Women’s Protective League,’ he tells us. ‘This is the president, Kato Akiko, a former geisha. This is Hasegawa Sumiko, the vice-president and a former typist. This is Iijima Kimi, a former dancer.’
The three women smile. The three women bow.
I order the manager to leave.
‘We are from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police,’ I tell them. ‘We are trying to identify the body of a young girl found recently in Shiba Park. We have reason to believe she may have worked here. We would be very grateful for your cooperation…’
The three women smile again. The three women bow again.
‘Do you know the Salon Matsu?’ I ask them. ‘In Kanda?’
The three women shake their heads.
‘Do you know anyone who has ever worked there?’
The three women shake their heads again.
‘Anyone who might have left here to work there?’
‘I am sorry,’ says Kato, the president in her bright kimono. ‘But nobody really talks about what they did before they came here or what they will do after they leave here. It is much better for us not to think or talk about the world outside of here…’
‘But you were a geisha. She was a typist. She was a dancer.’
‘Maybe we were,’ she smiles. ‘No one remembers.’
I don’t want to remember. In the half-light…
‘But what about new recruits?’ I ask. ‘Don’t you interview them? Don’t you ask them about their previous work?’
‘There are no interviews here,’ she laughs. ‘Only medicals.’
The chairs and the tiny curtains. Their concealed faces and their open legs. The two shallow pools. Every other day …
I ask all three, ‘How long have you been here, then?’
‘We all came in December last year,’ says Kato.
‘And how much do you owe the company?’
‘About five thousand yen each,’ she says.
‘And do you have any savings at all?’
‘Of course not,’ she laughs. ‘We have to buy our food and pay for our own medical expenses and then there are the new clothes and the cosmetics we need for our work.’
‘But how much do you earn?’
‘Before we were placed off-limits, we each had fifteen customers a day,’ she says. ‘Each customer paid fifty yen and half of that went to the manager and half to us.’
‘That’s almost four hundred yen a day,’ says Nishi, suddenly.
‘Almost four hundred,’ says Kato. ‘But that was before.’
‘And how many customers were coming a day?’
‘Almost four thousand a day back then.’
‘How many girls were there?’
‘Three hundred.’
‘That’s one hundred thousand yen a day for the company,’ exclaims Nishi. ‘One hundred thousand yen a day!’
‘But that was before,’ repeats Kato. ‘That was before we were placed off-limits to the soldiers.’
‘And now?’ I ask her. ‘How many come now?’
‘Maybe ten,’ she says. ‘Twenty at the most.’
I ask her, ‘Why do you have a union?’
‘To petition General MacArthur,’ smiles Kato. ‘The manager thought that if we wrote to General MacArthur as a union, asking him to let his lonely and homesick GIs come here, then the general would allow the International Palace to open again.’
I shake my head. We thank them –
They bow. We leave –
Leave. Leave …
I want to leave this place. This country. I want to flee from this place. This heart. I want to find the driver. Now …
I walk back inside one of the barracks –
Nishi follows me. Up the stairs –
There is a girl in the corridor. There is a naked girl in the corridor. There is a naked girl in the corridor on all fours. There is a naked girl in the corridor on all fours, no older than fourteen. There is a naked girl in the corridor on all fours, no older than fourteen, being penetrated up her backside by a Victor as she stares down the long, long corridor at Nishi and I with tears running down her cheeks, down her cheeks and into her mouth, saying, ‘Oh, very good Joe. Thank you, Joe. Oh, very good Joe. Thank you, Joe. Oh, oh, Joe…’
She is better off dead. I am better off dead …
This is America. This is Japan. This is democracy. This is defeat. I don’t have a country any more. On her knees or on her back, blood and come down her thighs. I don’t have a heart any more …
Her legs apart, her cunt swollen with pricks and pus –
I don’t want a heart. I don’t want a heart…
Thank you, Emperor MacArthur –
I don’t want a country …
Dōmo, Hirohito.
*
Nishi plays the good monkey all the way back to Tokyo as field becomes ruin and ruin becomes shack and shack becomes building and I sit and I watch him and wish I’d had the foresight and the guts to walk back, to walk back barefoot into Tokyo through field and through ruin and not to be sat back here in the Victors’ jeep listening to Nishi mix up his r’s and his l’s while the Victors laugh and throw him cigarettes and chewing gum as childish smiles light up his grateful face and so when we get out at Headquarters and we both bow down as low as we can and thank them a thousand times and they have driven off laughing and joking, throwing their cigarettes and chewing gum, and though I know tonight they’ll burn and they’ll itch and they’ll weep and they’ll scratch it’s no consolation, and so I turn and I slap Nishi hard across his face, so hard across his face that he falls over in the road and does not get back up again –
Because Nishi has no guts. No guts –
Because Nishi is gutless –
Gutless. Gutless …
Just like me.
*
Back inside Headquarters, I go to where we keep the undead. ‘And we’ve both seen this before, detective. Remember?’ I go to where we keep the files of the cases we have not solved. I don’t want to remember. To the archives and the records of our defeats and our failures. But in the half-light, I can’t forget. I ask the man on duty for one of our records of failure. ‘Did you find that file, inspector…?’
‘It would be the fifteenth of August,’ I tell him. ‘Last year.’
The officer disappears and then reappears, empty-handed –
‘Not there,’ he says. ‘Must have already been signed out.’
‘Really?’ I ask him. ‘Do you know who signed it out?’
The officer pulls out the tatty, old battered register –
‘Your Nishi of Room #2,’ laughs the officer.
‘You’re joking?’ I ask him. ‘When?’
‘Only yesterday,’ he says, still laughing at me.
*
Through the dirt and the dust. Through the shadows and the sweat. Chiku-taku. Down Sakurada-dōri to Atago I run. Through the doors and up the stairs. Chiku-taku. Detectives Kimura and Ishida sat in their shirtsleeves on their borrowed chairs at their borrowed desks; Kimura proud to have found Ishida; Ishida nervous and waiting –
I walk straight over. I ask them, ‘Where are the others?’
‘They’re not back from their rounds,’ says Kimura –
I am staring at Ishida. I am asking, ‘And Nishi?’
‘I thought he’d gone with you,’ says Kimura –
I’m still staring at Ishida, asking, ‘Fujita?’
They both shake their heads. Kimura says, ‘Not today.’
I reach down to Ishida. I grab Ishida. I pick him up. I kick away his borrowed chair. I say, ‘Where is Detective Fujita?’
‘I don’t know,’ flaps Ishida. ‘I really don’t know.’
I pull his face closer to mine by his shirt. There is sweat down his face. There is sweat down mine. There are tears in his eyes and there are tears in mine. ‘You’ve lied to me before. You’ve lied…’
‘No,’ squeals Ishida. ‘I haven’t lied to you. I haven’t…’
‘You’ve lied and you’ve lied and you’ve lied…’
‘No, no, no,’ cries Ishida. ‘I haven’t…’
‘You’ve lied to protect him…’
‘No, no, no. I haven’t…’
‘Lied to save him…’
‘No, no, no…’
‘Yes, you have,’ I hiss and I push him away from me. Back over his borrowed chair and back onto his borrowed desk. The sweat down his face and the tears in his eyes –
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry…’
‘Fujita’s finished,’ I tell him. ‘And you’ll be finished…’
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry…’
‘If you don’t tell me where he is…’
‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry…’
‘Tell me! Quick!’
‘Detective Fujita will be in the Ginza tonight,’ sobs Ishida. ‘He’ll be at the New Oasis club. After nine o’clock.’
‘He was seen drinking with Nodera Tomiji at the New Oasis on the night of the Matsuda Giichi hit…’
‘The New Oasis? Why there?’
But Ishida looks at the floor –
Ishida shakes his head –
‘I don’t know…’
I take out my handkerchief. I wipe my face. I wipe my neck –
I lean over Ishida. I lift up his face. I dry his eyes –
I tell him, ‘You stay here with Kimura, OK?’
He buries his head again and he nods.
*
There were tea-shops and cafés here once where you could listen to a gramophone recording as you watched the latest fashions stroll past. Now I stand on the Ginza and I stare into the windows of the Victors’ Post Exchange. I stand and I stare with the hungry kids and teenage girls at the Victors’ brand-new clothes, at their bright white towels and their real leather shoes. I stand and I stare as the children and the girls swarm around Victors laden down with shopping bags, the children and the girls begging the Victors for gum and chocolate –
I walk away. I walk away. I walk away. I walk …
Past the department stores, most still empty but some now opening on the lower floors, though these floors are covered with rubble and their showcases filled only with cheap junk. Past dead buildings still nothing but concrete frames, still black from the flames, along crumbling sidewalks and the endless piles of garbage –
I turn away. I turn away. I turn away. I turn …
From the shoddy little mats along the old broken curbs with their harsh silk handkerchiefs and their coarse picture postcards, their busted fountain pens and their flavoured cups of ice –
I look away. I look away. I look …
But every single rag and every single morsel has a market value here, every single grain of rice from our one bowl a day when one cup of rice, three cigarettes and four matches are our ration, when a long-dead fish is a whole week’s wage –
I cannot run away. I cannot run …
Now it’s time. Chiku-taku …
Now day is night.
*
Day is night. Night is day. Day is night. Night is day. Day is …
I stand before the door. I read the sign above the door –
The New Oasis is a Korean-run shithole in the shadow of the original Oasis, down another Ginza backstreet, between another bombed-out shell and another mountain-range of garbage. The original Oasis was another gift to the Victors from the Recreation and Amusement Association, another International Palace. But the New Oasis is not for the white Victors. The New Oasis is for the yellow ones, the Koreans and the Chinese. The New Oasis is not run by the Recreation and Amusement Association. The New Oasis is not owned by Ando Akira. The New Oasis is owned by Mr. Machii –
Machii Hisayuki, a Korean-Japanese, the Bull of Ginza …
I am itching and I am sweating and I am scared –
The old rival of Matsuda. The new enemy of Senju …
If Fujita is here, then Fujita has crossed a line –
Hayashi Jo face down in the water …
The door is closed. I open the door. I see a flight of steps down to another closed door. I walk down the steps. The door has a spyhole. I knock on the door. I know someone is staring at me through the spyhole. The handle turning now. The door opening –
‘What do you want?’ says a thickset Korean in a suit –
‘A drink,’ I tell him. ‘I’m here to meet a friend.’
‘This is a members’ club,’ he says –
‘Then I’d like to join,’ I say.
‘It’s one hundred yen.’
I curse. I curse …
I take out my wallet. But not my techō. I open it. I have one hundred yen in notes. But that is all I have. The thickset Korean takes the notes from me. The Korean puts them in his own pocket –
He laughs, ‘Welcome to the New Oasis club…’
The ceiling is low and the lights are dim. If Fujita is here, then Fujita has crossed a line. The bar is long and the staff Korean –
I see Fujita. Fujita is here. Fujita sees me. Fujita has crossed the line. I think he’ll run but he smiles. Fujita smiling. He is smiling as he stands and walks down the length of the bar towards me –
What if he has a gun? What if he pulls it here?
Down the length of the bar, still smiling –
Hayashi Jo face down in the water …
Fujita bows and says, ‘Good evening.’
‘Hayashi Jo is dead,’ I say. ‘And Adachi is looking for you.’
‘Adachi knows nothing,’ he says. ‘But he says nothing and then lets you fill in the gaps for him. Congratulations, inspector –
‘He’s probably followed you all the way here…’
‘I told Adachi nothing,’ I say. ‘But he knows things.’
‘What does Adachi know? What is there to know?’
‘Adachi knows you went to the Minpo offices,’ I tell him. ‘He knows you went there to see Hayashi Jo…’
‘And so what of it?’ asks Fujita.
‘So they told Adachi that he was the third cop in the last three days to visit them and that you were the first…’
‘But that doesn’t mean I killed him,’ says Fujita. ‘Does it?’
‘But yours is the only name he’s mentioned,’ I tell him. ‘You’re the only person Adachi is looking for…’
‘I’m not afraid of Adachi,’ laughs Fujita. ‘The captain has his secrets, just like everyone else. Just like you.’
I curse him and now I curse myself…
I ask, ‘Did you kill Hayashi Jo?’
‘Now that’s a very strange question to be asking me,’ says Detective Fujita. ‘Because I hardly knew Hayashi Jo at all and it wasn’t me who gave poor old Hayashi’s name to Senju Akira…’
Day is night. Night is day. Day is night. Night is day …
Fujita smiles, ‘I thought that was you, corporal?’
Day is night. Night is day. Day is night …
Fujita laughs, ‘That was you, wasn’t it?’
Night is day. Day is night. Day is …
I start to speak but the lights go out –
Night. Night. Night. Night …
There’s been another power cut –
Night. Night. Night …
‘That was you, wasn’t it?’ whispers Fujita again, in the dark.
*
The power is still down and it is even darker now. The lights still out and I’m even drunker now. I’m drunk on Korean liquor. The stench of the liquor sticks to the sweat on my skin. My skin itches and so I scratch. Gari-gari. I scratch and I scratch until my arms bleed beneath my shirt. Gari-gari. My shirt heavy with sweat and now blood. Blood on my hands as I walk from the Ginza back towards Atago. Back towards Atago through the debris of Yūraku-chō. The debris of Yūraku-chō piled up in mountains and in monuments. In monuments to loss, loss under every archway. Under every single archway, down every single alleyway. Down every alleyway and in every shadow. In every shadow and in every shout. Every shout of –
‘Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu…?’
I look under every single archway. Down every single alleyway. In every single shadow. Until I find the one I am looking for. The one in her yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress –
‘Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu…?’
In her white half-sleeved chemise and pink socks –
Her white canvas shoes with red rubber soles –
‘Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu…?’
Her hair is black. Her skin is white –
Under an archway. In a shadow –
‘Asobu …? Asobu…?’
‘Asobu?’ she asks me in a harsh Tōhoku accent and I nod and I follow her deeper under the archway, deeper into the shadows where she asks me for the money first –
‘I’ve no money,’ I tell her –
And I curse myself again …
I take out my police notebook. I show her my police notebook and she curses me now and says, ‘I’m with the White Bird Society.’
‘So what?’ I tell her as I kneel her down on all fours–
I kneel her down on all fours and I raise her dress –
Her yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress …
She wears no underwear. She is naked beneath –
I screw her backside as she curses and curses –
On her knees. On her knees. On her knees … I turn her over and I lie her on her back –
I screw her cunt and then I come –
No country. No heart …
‘Finished?’ she asks in her harsh Tōhoku accent and I nod as she pushes me off her and stands back up and dusts herself down, rubbing at her knees and then at her palms –
Night is day. Day is night. The men are the women …
I stand before her now and I bow. I say, ‘I’m sorry I have no money. I’m very sorry. What’s your name?’
The women are the men …
And she tilts back her head, deep under the arch, deep in the shadows, and she laughs, ‘You choose: Mitsuko? Yori? Kazuko? Yoshie? Tatsue? Hiroko? Yoshiko? Ryuko? Go on, you choose…’
The dead are the living. The living are the dead …
‘Your name is Yuki,’ I tell her. ‘Yuki.’
*
I close my eyes, but I can’t sleep. Day is night. I can hear the rain falling. I open my eyes, but I can’t think. Night is day. I can see the sun shining. I close my eyes, but can’t sleep. Day is night. The good detective visits the crime scene one hundred times. I open my eyes, but can’t think. Night is day. The black night light behind the white Shiba trees. Close my eyes, but can’t sleep. Day is night. The white trees that have seen so much. Open my eyes, but can’t think. Night is day. The white branches that have borne so much. Close my eyes, can’t sleep. Day is night. The white leaves that have come again. Open my eyes, can’t think. Night is day. To grow and to fall and to grow again. Close eyes, can’t sleep. Day is night. I turn away. Open eyes, can’t think. Night is day. I walk away from the scene of the crime. Close, can’t sleep. Day is night. Beneath the Black Gate. Open, can’t think. Night is day. The dog still waits. Can’t sleep. Day is night. The dog still waits. Can’t think. Night is day. The dog still waits. Can’t. Day is night. The dog still waits. Can’t. Night is day. The dog still waits. Can’t. Day. The dog still waits. Can’t. Night …
Tokyo, 89°, slightly cloudy
There are dark grey clouds in the bleached white sky as night turns to day. I am vomiting in the toilets of Atago police station. Black bile again. There are newly written signs on the peeling plaster walls as I walk back upstairs. I stand over the sink. There are local government warnings about fresh outbreaks of cholera. I spit. There are instructions to refrain from drinking unboiled water, especially well-water, and to refrain from eating uncooked foods, especially raw fish. I wash my face. I look up into the mirror. I stare into the mirror –
No one is who they say they are …
There are seven grey faces waiting for me in the borrowed room upstairs; Hattori, Takeda, Sanada, Shimoda, and Kimura; Ishida with his worries and Nishi with his black eye. No Fujita now …
They walked round Shiba all day yesterday. Investigation is footwork. They asked round Shiba all day yesterday. Investigation is footwork. They described the suspect all day yesterday. Investigation is footwork. They described the victim all day yesterday –
The yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress …
I ask Hattori and Takeda what they found out –
‘Nothing whatsoever,’ say Takeda and Hattori.
The white half-sleeved chemise and pink socks …
I ask Sanada and Shimoda what they found –
‘Nothing at all,’ they both tell me.
The white canvas shoes …
I ask Kimura and Ishida –
‘Nothing,’ they say.
But they are looking at me now with questions in their eyes. They are looking at me with doubts in their eyes –
But I am the head of the room …
They are looking at me now with dissent in their eyes. They are looking at me with hate in their eyes –
I am the head. I am the boss …
I divide them into different sets of pairs; Takeda and Ishida, Hattori and Shimoda, Sanada and Kimura. I leave Nishi for later –
I am the boss! I am the boss!
I hand two missing persons reports to Takeda and Ishida; Ishihara Michiko and Ōzeki Hiromi, aged sixteen and seventeen years old. I am the head of this room. I hand two missing persons reports to Hattori and Shimoda; Konuma Yasuyo and Sugai Seiko, aged seventeen and eighteen years old. I am the Boss of this Room. I hand two missing persons reports to Sanada and Kimura; Tanabe Shimeko and Honma Fumiko, both eighteen years old. I am the head! I tell Nishi to go and wait for me in the cells downstairs –
I am the boss! I am the boss! I am the boss!
‘These are all reports of missing girls aged fifteen to twenty,’ I tell the rest of the room. ‘And these are all reports of girls who went missing between the fifteenth and the thirty-first of July this year. And so one of these girls might be our girl…’
I am the boss! I am the boss!
‘So I want them found!’
I am the boss!
I run back to the toilets. I vomit again. Brown bile. I walk over to the sink. I spit. I wipe my mouth. I turn on the tap. I wash my face again. I look up into the mirror. I stare into that mirror –
No one is who they say they are …
Detective Nishi is waiting for me in the cells downstairs. Nishi with his black eye and darker fears. Nishi shocked now. Nishi surprised now. Nishi up against the cell wall. My face in his face. But Nishi knows what I want. Nishi must know what I want –
But he starts to apologize about yesterday. He starts to say, ‘I’m sorry about my behaviour yesterday. In the truck…’
I don’t want to hear his apologies or his lies –
Nishi knows why I’m here. He knows what I want. Nishi must know why I’m here. He must know what I want –
But Nishi keeps apologizing and lying –
‘I’m sorry,’ he says again and again. ‘My behaviour yesterday, it was unacceptable, in the truck. I’m sorry…’
But Nishi is lying. He must be lying. Nishi must know what I want. He must know why I’m here before I say, ‘I want that file.’
‘What file?’ asks Nishi and asks again, ‘What file …?’
He must know before I ask again, ‘Where is the file?’
‘What file?’ he asks and asks again, ‘What file …?’
‘The file you signed out!’ I shout. ‘That file!’ He shakes his head and says, ‘I don’t know.’
‘The Miyazaki Mitsuko file,’ I tell him –
He shakes his head again. ‘I don’t know.’
‘You mean, you don’t know where it is?’
‘No, I don’t know the file you mean.’
‘But you remember the Miyazaki Mitsuko case?’ I ask him. ‘The murder on the day of the surrender? The body in an air-raid shelter near Shinagawa? You remember?’
Nishi nods his head. Nishi says, ‘Now you tell me, yes.’
‘So where is the file you took from Headquarters?’
Nishi shakes his head. ‘I didn’t take any file.’
‘I saw your name in the log,’ I tell him.
Nishi says, ‘It wasn’t me. Really.’
There are questions in his eyes …
‘Then someone has used your name, used your seal, to sign out the Miyazaki Mitsuko case file?’
Nishi shakes his head again. Now Detective Nishi asks, ‘But why would anyone do that? Why?’
Innocence in his eyes …
‘It wasn’t even our case,’ he says. ‘It was the Kempeitai…’
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
‘So there’ll hardly be anything in the file…’
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
‘Surely just the barest of details…’
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
‘The date and time of the crime…’
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
‘The names of the witnesses…’
Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
‘The names of the officers…’
Ton-ton …
I step back from him. I step back from the cell wall. I turn towards the cell door. I start to walk out of the cell –
‘Boss?’ asks Detective Nishi. ‘What do you want me to do?’
I don’t turn back to him. I just tell him, ‘Wait upstairs…’
‘What if Detective Fujita comes back?’ asks Nishi –
‘Fujita is not coming back,’ I tell him and now I start to walk quicker, now I start to run, to run to the toilets upstairs –
I vomit. Yellow bile. I vomit again. Grey bile. Four times I have vomited. Black bile. Brown bile, yellow bile and grey. Four times I have stared into that mirror. Four times I have screamed –
No one is who they say they are!
*
In the ruins, among the rubble with a cigarette. Two little boys crouch down and watch me smoke, waiting for the dog-end. Two little boys in grey undershirts and baggy trousers, their faces and their arms as black as pitch. This ruin was once a printing shop that produced a newsletter showing daily rice prices. During the Shiba festivals, the owner would give away coloured paper to the local children and teach them how to make origami elephants and cranes. Now three little girls appear among the rubble and call to the two little boys. The little girls with their short hair and dirty faces. The two little boys ask for my dog-end and ask for my newspaper. I hand them the dog-end and I hand them the newspaper and the two little boys run over to the three girls. I watch the two little boys spread out my newspaper. I watch them crease and fold the paper into two GI hats. The three little girls stand among the rubble and call to the two little boys. In the ruins, the two little boys march up and down with their dog-ends in their mouths and their paper hats on their heads –
‘Asobu?’ call the three little girls –
‘Asobu …? Asobu …?’
*
I knock on the door of the interview room at Meguro police station. I open it. I bow. I take a seat next to the stenographer. Chief Inspector Kanehara and Inspector Kai do not look up but the wife of Kodaira Yoshio glances up at me and then looks away again –
Mrs. Kodaira is younger than her husband, a large woman with full round breasts and a round full face. Mrs. Kodaira is wearing her best summer dress, clutching her handbag –
‘I know he knew this Midorikawa,’ she is saying. ‘But I’m sure he did not kill her. I’m sure there is some mistake…’
‘Your husband has already confessed to the murder,’ says Inspector Kai. ‘And you’ve read his confession. There’s no mistake.’
‘But I want to see him,’ she says. ‘To ask him myself.’
‘Later,’ says Kai. ‘If you answer our questions…’
‘But in the confession it says that the murder occurred at around noon on the sixth of August,’ she says. ‘My husband was working at the laundry until half past two that day and then he came straight home and stayed there with us until the next morning…’
‘How can you be so sure of that?’ asks Inspector Kai.
‘Because it was on that exact day that he asked me to start keeping a diary,’ she says. ‘To write down the times that he worked and the times he came home and the times he went back out…’
‘And why did he ask you to do that?’ says Kai.
‘Because he was worried that the laundry was not paying him for all the overtime and all the night shifts,’ she says. ‘That’s why.’
‘And the first record was made on the sixth of August?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘On the sixth of August and I wrote something like, Came straight home from work at 2:30 p.m.’
‘And you still have this diary, then?’ asks Kai.
‘Yes,’ she says again. ‘Back at the house.’
Now Inspector Kanehara places a piece of paper on the table. Now Inspector Kanehara asks her, ‘Do you know what this is?’
Mrs. Kodaira shakes her head and says, ‘No, I don’t.’
‘This is your husband’s time sheet from the laundry,’ says Inspector Kanehara. ‘This piece of paper records the actual days and shifts that your husband worked in August at the laundry…’
Mrs. Kodaira stares down at the piece of paper.
‘And as you can see,’ continues Inspector Kanehara, ‘the sixth of August was actually your husband’s day off that week.’
‘But you see, this is why he wanted me to keep a diary,’ she says. ‘Because they were always making mistakes like this…’
‘It’s not a mistake,’ says Kanehara. ‘We’ve checked.’
Mrs. Kodaira clutches her handbag a little tighter –
Questions. Questions. Questions. Questions …
‘Why would he kill?’ she asks. ‘Why would he?’
‘You’ve read the confession he made,’ says Kai. ‘In the confession he says that he was driven by lust for Midorikawa…’
‘She wanted my husband to get her a job,’ says Mrs. Kodaira. ‘And so she seduced him in order to persuade him to help her.’
‘He approached her,’ says Kai. ‘At Shinagawa…’
‘He gave her food,’ she says. ‘She was hungry.’
‘He told us he put his hand up her skirt,’ says Kai. ‘He told us he put his fingers inside her as they rode on the train…’
‘Exactly!’ shouts his wife. ‘She wanted him…’
‘He raped her,’ says Kai. ‘He murdered her.’
‘He raped her?’ laughs Mrs. Kodaira. ‘You’re joking! This Midorikawa girl seduced him, just like all those others…’
Now I lean forward. Now I ask, ‘What others?’
‘The ones that hang around the barracks,’ she says. ‘He’s told me about them, the shameful way they dress, the shameful way they speak. How they will do anything for food or cigarettes…’
I ask her, ‘Does your husband often talk about women?’
‘Of course he doesn’t,’ says Mrs. Kodaira. ‘And I know you’re trying to make out he’s some kind of sex maniac, raping and killing young women, but he’s just a normal Japanese man…’
‘We haven’t said anything about raping and murdering anyone else other than Miss Midorikawa,’ I tell her. ‘Have we?’
She shakes her head. She clutches her handbag –
Questions. Questions. Questions. Questions …
‘But now I want you to think about last month,’ I tell her. ‘Can you remember which days your husband did not work in July?’
She shrugs her shoulders. ‘He worked all of them…’
Inspector Kanehara places another piece of paper on the table. Inspector Kanehara says, ‘Except the eighth and the twenty-second.’
‘Can you remember what your husband did on those days?’ I ask her. ‘Did he stay at home with you? Did you go for supplies?’
‘He often went for supplies,’ she says. ‘Back to Nikkō.’
Now Kanehara, Kai and I all glance up at each other –
‘I never see them. I never really go back there now …’
‘How often?’ I ask her. ‘Can you remember exactly when?’
But she says, ‘We all need to eat, detective. Need food…’
‘We know that,’ I tell her. ‘And we’re not interested in whether your husband bought stuff legally or illegally. We’re only interested in the dates you think he went looking for supplies…’
‘I can’t remember exactly,’ she says. ‘I’m sorry…’
‘What about last month?’ I ask her again. ‘Your husband’s work-sheet says he had the eighth and the twenty-second off.’
‘Then he must have done,’ she says. ‘If you say so.’
‘So can you remember what he did on those days?’ I ask her again. ‘Did he stay home? Did he go out? What did he do?’
‘How should I know?’ she says. ‘All the days are the same!’
‘But surely not when your husband had a day off?’
‘But I can’t remember the eighth from the twenty-second,’ she shouts. ‘How can I remember one day from another …?’
Now Inspector Kanehara says, ‘Then I’ll try to help you remember. Do you read the newspaper in your house?’
She clutches her handbag. She nods her head.
‘Well then,’ says Kanehara. ‘On the eighth of July there was the story of the baby born with two faces in Nagoya…’
She nods her head. She says, ‘I remember…’
‘And the twenty-second of July was the day that all the schools had to destroy their photographs of the Emperor…’
She nods her head again and says, ‘I know…’
‘Then can you remember anything else about those days?’ asks Inspector Kanehara. ‘Anything about what your husband did?’
‘I was sure he went to work,’ she says. ‘I was sure.’
Inspector Kanehara nods. Kanehara says, ‘I see.’
Now Inspector Kai sits forward again. Now Inspector Kai says, ‘This is not your husband’s first marriage, is it? Nor yours?’
‘My first husband was killed in China,’ she tells us.
‘My condolences,’ says Kai. ‘When did he die?’
‘Almost five years ago now,’ she says.
‘And so how long have you been married to Mr. Kodaira?’
‘A year and a half,’ she says. ‘Not very long really.’
‘And when did you become pregnant?’ asks Kai –
‘Almost straight away,’ she says. ‘Last March.’
Inspector Kai asks, ‘Not before you married?’
‘No!’ she shouts. ‘That’s a dirty question!’
‘Excuse me,’ says Inspector Kai. ‘And so when were you evacuated to stay with your family in Toyama?’
‘It was last May,’ says Mrs. Kodaira.
‘But your husband stayed in Tokyo?’
‘My husband hated it when I was evacuated back to Toyama,’ she says. ‘He cried at the ticket gate. Wā-wā. He cried on the platform. Wā-wā. He cried louder than a baby. Wā-wā…’
She dabs her eyes. She clutches her handbag –
Questions. Questions. Questions. Questions …
‘I know he has done bad things in the past,’ she says now. ‘And I know he has changed jobs many times. But he was a good soldier and he’s a good father to his child and since his child was born he has worked much harder and he even likes his present job.’
She clutches her handbag tighter and tighter –
Questions. Questions. Questions. Questions …
‘My husband is a very friendly man,’ says Mrs. Kodaira. ‘My husband is also a very kind man. He will talk to anyone and he will help anyone and, in my opinion, this is actually his worst quality because that is why he’s in trouble today. But my husband is not a violent man. Of course he gets angry if I serve him food he does not like or if there is not enough food for us all. But my husband never drinks alcohol and he is never violent and he never tells lies…’
‘I believe you, Mrs. Kodaira,’ says Chief Inspector Kanehara. ‘And that’s why I believe your husband’s confession to be true…’
Her shoulders are shaking. Her shoulders trembling –
No answers. No answers. No answers. No answers …
In the cells downstairs, her husband is waiting.
*
I do not go back to Headquarters with Chief Inspector Kanehara and Inspector Kai. I take the Yamate Line from Meguro round to Shimbashi. I itch and I scratch now. Gari-gari. I get off the train at Shimbashi. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. The New Life Market is still cordoned off. I itch as I stand and I scratch as I stare. Gari-gari. Four military policemen in their white summer fatigues stand guard. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. Their blue eyes are blank and their black boots are rooted. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. Behind the sentries, inside the market building, I can see the rows of empty stalls. I itch as I turn and I scratch as I leave. Gari-gari. I walk down the back alleys and the shaded lanes, through the shadows and the arches to the old wooden stairs and the door at the top of those stairs –
I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I itch and I scratch –
But the door at the top of the stairs is closed –
The sign on Senju’s door reads, Gone to War.
*
I walk into Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters. I walk up the stairs to Police Arcade. I knock on the door to Chief Kita’s office. I open it. I apologize. I bow. I apologize again. I take my seat at the table; Chief Kita at the head; Chief Inspectors Adachi and Kanehara to his right; Inspector Kai on his left; the same people and the same place but a different time and a different conversation today –
Today the conversation is just about Kodaira –
Inspector Kanehara, Inspector Kai and half of Room #1 spent yesterday questioning Kodaira while Nishi and I were chasing ghosts out at the International Palace and the rest of my room were walking the streets of Shiba, in the heat and in the dirt –
Investigation is footwork …
‘There are some similarities with other cases,’ says the chief. ‘And so these other cases are going to need to be washed again. Now I know there is a shortage of manpower so, first of all, we are going to need to see how many of these other cases match up with the various places that the suspect Kodaira has lived and worked…’
‘And the first case is that of Abe Yoshiko…’
Shinagawa. Shinagawa. Shinagawa …
‘You might remember that the body of a teenage girl was found by a signal operator on the thirteenth of June this year, just over two months ago now, under a burnt-out truck in the scrapyard of the Shibaura Transportation Company at 7 Hamamachi, Shiba Ward, on the ocean side of Shinagawa train station…’
Adachi has his eyes on me …
‘The autopsy revealed that the girl had been raped and then strangled with her own neckerchief on or around the ninth of June. The investigation headquarters was set up at Takanawa police station and was led by former Chief Inspector Mori who, as you all know, is now unfortunately no longer with us…’
Arrested and imprisoned …
‘The body was identified as that of Abe Yoshiko who was fifteen years old and attended Dai-san Kokumin Gakkō in Hirai. However, investigations revealed she was actually in a fūten group with three other girls who were doing business with American soldiers. The autopsy also revealed that her last meal had consisted of macaroni and sausage, suggesting that she was being given food by American soldiers. There was also a persistent rumour that Abe had been sleeping with a uniformed officer from the Mita police station. As you may know, this officer was identified, questioned and then dismissed because of improper conduct…’
Dismissed and disgraced …
‘However, because of the connection with the Shinchū Gun, because of the possible involvement of American soldiers, former Chief Inspector Mori felt unable to pursue the case and so it was recorded as unsolved and the banner rolled back up –
‘The investigation officially closed.
‘However, on reading through Kodaira’s statements and cross-referencing them with unsolved crimes of a similar nature to the murder of Midorikawa and by further cross-referencing these unsolved crimes with the dates and places Kodaira is known to have lived and worked, Chief Inspector Kanehara now believes the suspect should be questioned about the murder of Abe Yoshiko in June.’
Inspector Kanehara thanks the chief. Then Kanehara says, ‘Kodaira has already denied any knowledge of the murder of Abe Yoshiko. However, earlier this morning, Kodaira’s wife inadvertently told us that Kodaira had mentioned the groups of young women who hang around the barracks and the laundry where he works. It is my hope that we will be able to find a witness who can place Kodaira in the company of Abe on or around the ninth of June this year and then Kodaira will have little choice but to confess again –
‘So our first step will be to trace the other remaining members of Abe’s fūten group. Fortunately, former Chief Inspector Mori interviewed them during the course of the initial investigation and their names and addresses were verified and recorded in the case files. If Abe was familiar with Kodaira then it is also likely one or more of these girls will also have been familiar…’
‘And also,’ adds the chief, ‘there is a slight chance that one of these girls might be able to assist in the identification of the second body we found at Shiba…’
‘Or even be that body,’ laughs Chief Inspector Adachi –
His eyes on me, all their eyes on me now …
I clear my throat. I bow. I say, ‘As you are all aware, as yet we have been unable to identify the body and so I very much appreciate and am very grateful for any assistance…’
The chief nods. The chief says, ‘You will then personally go to the most likely addresses we have on file for these girls…’
They are punishing me, but punishing me for what?
‘You will personally go to these addresses,’ repeats the chief. ‘It is important that you do not delegate this responsibility —’
Have there been complaints about me …?
‘If any of the girls are found at any of these addresses, then I want you to accompany them to Shibuya police station —’
Why not Atago? Why not my room?
‘There you will hand over any girls you find to Chief Inspector Kanehara. After Chief Inspector Kanehara has questioned these girls about Abe Yoshiko and the suspect Kodaira Yoshio, then you and the other men from Room #2 will be able to interview them about the second body found at Shiba Park —’
They are punishing me …
The chief stops talking. The chief looks up. The chief says, ‘We appreciate your hard work in this, detective inspector —’
But for what?
The chief now turns to Inspector Kai. The chief says, ‘Inspector Kai and the First Room will take a description of the victim Abe Yoshiko to the suspect Kodaira Yoshio’s family, to his friends, to his neighbours and to his workmates —’
Questions. Questions. Questions …
Finally, the chief says, ‘Chief Inspector Adachi and his team will continue to work on the case of the journalist Hayashi –
Answers. Answers and …
‘Dismissed!’
Warnings!
*
I take a different route back to Atago. They are punishing me. The restaurant is a shack slapped together from pieces of corrugated metal. They are warning me. They have no white rice, but they have white bread. They are punishing me. They have custard cakes, but they have no white rice. They are warning me. I order a cup of coffee from the woman behind the counter and I squeeze onto an improvised stool. They are punishing me. The young man beside me is still wearing his uniform, his kitbag propped beneath the counter. They are warning me. He has short-cropped hair and smells of DDT. They are punishing me. There are no badges on his uniform and there is no light in his eyes. They are warning me. The woman behind the counter places a doughnut in front of him. ‘You just got back, dear?’
The young man stares at the doughnut and nods his head.
‘Got a wife waiting for you?’ she asks. ‘Your mother?’
The young man looks up from the plate now and says, ‘They think I died honourably in battle three years ago. They received a citation from the Mayor of Tokyo which said Private Noma would forever be remembered and may his soul rest in peace. They were given a small white casket in which the ashes of my body had been brought back to Japan. They deposited the casket in our local temple. They placed a framed picture of me in my uniform on the family butsudan. They lit incense for me, offered white rice and sake…’
I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember …
‘They wouldn’t look at my face. They said Noma is dead…’
But here in the half-light, I can’t forget…
‘They wouldn’t look at my feet…’
They are punishing us all …
‘They said I’m a ghost…’
Warning us all …
No one is who they seem.
*
I stand over the sink again. Black bile again. I spit again. Brown bile again. I wipe my mouth again. Yellow bile again. I turn on the tap again. Grey bile again. I wash my face again. Black bile, brown bile, yellow bile and grey. I do not look into the mirror –
Cover the mirrors! Cover the mirrors!
I go upstairs into the borrowed office. Detectives Takeda and Ishida are still out looking for Ishihara Michiko and Ōzeki Hiromi. Detectives Hattori and Shimoda are still out looking for Konuma Yasuyo and Sugai Seiko. Detectives Sanada and Kimura still out looking for Tanabe Shimeko and Honma Fumiko. But Detective Nishi is sat at his borrowed desk in our borrowed office where I left him, where I left him to sit and wait for me. They are keeping me close. Tight. But I am keeping him closer –
‘Wake up,’ I say. ‘Time to go…’
Down the Shibuya backstreets and down the Shibuya alleyways, to knock on the doors of the addresses we have taken from the Abe file, to be given another address and then another because this city is one huge sea of displaced persons, moving from here to there and back again to here, looking for a relative, looking for a home, looking for a job, looking for a meal, a familiar face on an un-bombed street in an un-burnt neighbourhood, selling this and selling that to buy a little of this and a little of that, from room to room, house to house, neighbourhood to neighbourhood, place to place, one minute here and one minute gone, gone and then back again, back and then gone again, tiny, tiny fish in a rough, rough sea –
It is late in the afternoon before we finally find one of Abe Yoshiko’s friends, one of her fūten group, down another Shibuya backstreet, up another Shibuya alleyway, our shirts stuck to our backs and our trousers stuck to our legs –
Five in the afternoon and the girl is still asleep, says the landlady. The girl never rises before dusk. But she always pays her rent. Even brings home extra rations. Not that she should be telling two handsome detectives from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. But yes, she is in her room and yes, the landlady agrees to go up and wake her –
Now the landlady mops her neck with a towel and gets up from her knees to go up the steep wooden stairs, along the narrow wooden corridor to the room of seventeen-year-old Masaoka Hisae –
Masaoka Hisae who follows her landlady back along the narrow wooden corridor, back down the steep wooden stairs to light a cigarette and tighten the belt of her yukata and narrow her eyes and scowl and then sigh and ask us, ‘What do you want this time?’
*
The Shibuya police station is tense. The Shibuya police station is armed to its teeth. Nishi and I should have taken Masaoka to either the Meguro or the Atago police station. But the chief told us to take anybody we find into the Shibuya police station. The Shibuya station is tense. The Shibuya station is armed to its teeth. The Shibuya station raided the headquarters of Kakyō Sōkai, the association of Chinese merchants. The Shibuya station took away Kō Gyoku-Ju, the vice-president of the Kakyō Sōkai. The Shibuya station tense. The Shibuya Station armed to its teeth. The Shibuya station is holding Kō Gyoku-Ju in a cell downstairs. The Shibuya station doesn’t want anyone to know. Shibuya station tense. Shibuya armed to its teeth. But everyone knows what will happen next –
Because they are coming. They are coming …
Nishi and I commandeer an upstairs room to use to interview Masaoka Hisae. Then Nishi and I send a message to Chief Inspector Kanehara at Metro Headquarters. Now Nishi and I leave Masaoka in a downstairs cell to wait until Inspector Kanehara arrives from Headquarters. Until it’s time to begin the interview –
They are coming. They are coming …
Masaoka in the downstairs cell opposite Kō Gyoku-Ju and his bloodied face and his blackened eyes –
They are coming.
*
The night is coming down now. Chief Inspector Kanehara here now. The sweat running in rivers down Masaoka Hisae’s face and neck. The fan in her hand never stops. The scowl on her face never leaves –
Never leaves until Kanehara shows her a photograph –
Masaoka stares at the photograph. Masaoka nods her head and says, ‘Yoshiko and I visited his room in the barracks…’
‘He has a room in the barracks, does he?’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Just a futon and…’
‘So you went there for sex?’
‘He promised us zanpan,’ she says. ‘Bread and sausages from Shinchū kitchens. Leftovers and scraps…’
‘Did you screw him?’
‘Yes,’ she says.
‘Did Abe?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘At least not while we were there together. She refused him…’
‘And when was this?’
‘May or June…’
‘Where?’
‘The Shinchū Gun barracks down at the old Naval Business and Accounting School in Shinagawa. That was where he worked and that was where he had his room…’
‘Did you stay there?’
‘Yes.’
‘Both of you?’
‘Three of us.’
‘Who was the third girl?’
‘Tominaga…’
‘And did she fuck him?’
‘Maybe,’ laughs Masaoka. ‘He could fuck all night could that one, said he was making up for all the screws he had lost…’
‘But he wasn’t Shinchū Gun, was he?’
‘He had bread. He had meat.’
We have no rice. No food …
‘You fuck for bread?’
We all beg for food …
‘He was kind to us.’
We all beg…
‘Kind to you?’
Beg…
‘Yes.’
‘So, after Abe was murdered, you never thought it could have been this man who killed your friend on the ninth of June?’
‘No, but now you’ve told me all these things and now you’ve shown me his photograph, maybe…’
‘But you didn’t mention him to Chief Inspector Mori at the time of the murder, did you?’
‘No one mentioned him to me and I didn’t think he could have been her killer…’
‘Did he tell you he’d already been convicted of the murder of his father-in-law?’
‘He never said,’ she smiles. ‘Or I would have mentioned it.’
‘He’s also confessed to the rape and murder of a girl.’
‘Well then, maybe he murdered Yoshiko…’
‘But he definitely knew Abe Yoshiko?’
‘He definitely knew her, yes.’
‘He had asked her for sex?’
‘He asked her for sex.’
‘And she refused?’
‘That night, yes.’
‘Thank you,’ says Chief Inspector Kanehara. ‘You have been very helpful, Miss Masaoka.’
Masaoka Hisae narrows her eyes now and scowls at him and asks, ‘Can I go home then?’
‘In a little while,’ I tell her. ‘But I have a few more questions to ask you first…’
Masaoka Hisae folds her arms back in front of her and says, ‘Go on then, please.’
‘I want you to tell me a little bit more about your group.’
Masaoka Hisae laughs. ‘My group? My fūten group?’
There are boots on the stairs now, boots coming …
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Their names and their ages…’
Boots coming down the corridor …
Now the door flies open without a knock, a uniformed policeman falling into the interview room, panting, ‘All hell’s broken loose, sir! The Formosans, the Chinese and the Koreans have all joined forces and they have attacked the markets at Shimbashi and at ōji and they have stoned the Atago and ōji police stations and they have injured Police Chief Hashioka of the ōji police station…’
The Chinks are murdering the Japanese …
‘There are thousands of them and they have come up from Osaka and Kobe and they have got Chinese sailors from a Chinese battleship anchored in Yokohama and they are armed with machine guns and they are firing at the police and the Japanese…’
The Chinks are murdering the Japanese …
‘Now they are all heading this way, heading here to the Shibuya station to bust out Kō Gyoku-Ju…’
*
Kanehara, Nishi and I run downstairs and outside. They are coming. The night is here. They are coming. It is 9 p.m. and the battle lines have been drawn. They are coming. Two hundred policemen standing guard outside the Shibuya police station. They are coming. Inspector Adachi here, a short sword in one hand, a drawn pistol in the other. They are coming. Five trucks full of Formosans approach –
Nerves. Nerves. Nerves. Nerves. Nerves. Nerves …
‘They are here! They are here! They are here!’
Nerves. Nerves. Nerves. Nerves. Nerves …
Police stop the first truck. Nerves. The driver tells the officers they are heading for the Kakyō Sōkai headquarters. Nerves. The officers make their report to the Shibuya chief. Nerves. The Shibuya chief tells them to let the trucks pass through. Nerves. The first truck is allowed through the checkpoint. Nerves. Then the second. Nerves. Then the third. Nerves. Then the fourth. Nerves. Finally the fifth –
Nerves. Nerves. Nerves. Nerves …
The fifth truck with its tailgate down. Nerves. The fifth truck with a machine gun mounted in the back. Nerves. The machine gun mounted in the back that now opens fire, that cuts through the night, that sends policemen running, hitting two policemen, cutting them down, other officers scrambling for their own revolvers, firing back –
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang …
Now I see Senju’s men and Tokyo policemen side by side –
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang …
Formosans firing back from the trucks. Formosans falling from the backs of the trucks, bleeding. Formosans lying in the street –
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang …
One, two, three, four, five, six Formosans lying in the street –
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang …
Through the windscreen of a Formosan truck, the driver hit –
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang …
The truck up on the sidewalk. The truck fast into a wall –
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang …
Formosans spilling out of the back of the truck –
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang …
They have iron clubs. They have pickaxes –
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang…
We have revolvers. We have bullets –
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang …
I see Senju Akira with his pistol –
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang …
One, two, three, four –
Bang! Bang! Bang …
Dead Formosans –
Bang! Bang …
Five, six –
Bang!
*
There is blood in the entrance to the Shibuya police station. There is blood on the floor of reception. There is blood down the corridor. There is blood on the stairs. There is blood on the walls. There is blood in the cells downstairs. The cells all full. The cells all silent –
There are men with buckets. Men with mops –
The Victors will be here at any moment –
Men with cloths and men with bleach –
Men with pistols and men with gags –
The Victors will demand answers –
‘They’re here! They’re here!’
We can hear the engines of the Victors’ jeeps. We can hear their trucks. We can hear them pull up outside the Shibuya police station. We can hear their doors slam. We can hear the Victors’ boots. Now we can see the Victors’ faces –
Here they come again …
Through the station doors, the Victors and their Nisei translators, waving their arms and shouting their orders –
‘What’s happened here?’ they ask the Shibuya police chief –
‘There was an attack by a group of Formosans,’ he says –
‘Where are these Formosans now?’ they ask him –
‘They have fled in their trucks,’ he tells them –
‘Did you make any arrests?’ they ask him –
‘Not yet,’ the Shibuya chief tells them –
‘You have no suspects in custody?’
‘Unfortunately not,’ he says –
The Victors look around at the entrance to the Shibuya police station. The sparkling clean entrance to the Shibuya station. The Victors look around at the reception. The sparkling clean reception. The Victors look down the corridor. The sparkling clean corridor. But the Victors don’t look down the stairs. The stairs that were covered in blood. The Victors don’t look at the walls. The walls that were covered in blood. The Victors don’t ask to see the cells downstairs. The cells that are full of men with gags in their mouths, full of other men with pistols in their hands, bloody gags and bloody pistols –
The Victors don’t see these men with bloody pistols –
These men with bloody gags in their mouths –
See nothing. Hear nothing. Say nothing…
The Victors go back out through the station doors. The Victors get back in their trucks. They get back in their jeeps –
The Victors start their engines. The Victors leave –
‘They’re gone!’
And now so are we, back down the stairs that were covered in blood, back past the walls that were covered in blood, back to the cells that are still all full, that are still all silent –
No one can save them now …
They have stripped the Formosans of their pistols. No one can save them now. They have stripped the Formosans of their knives. No one can save them now. They have stripped the Formosans of their staves. No one can save them now. They have stripped the Formosans of their clubs. No one can save them now. They have stripped the Formosans of their pickaxes. No one can save them now. They have stripped the Formosans of their money. No one can save them now. They have stripped the Formosans of their clothes. No one can save them now. Now they will strip these Formosans of one last thing –
Every man in Shibuya police station down in the cells –
The rumours of dead Japanese policemen …
Policemen with guns. Policemen with swords –
I don’t know why I came down here …
The cells have been opened –
I don’t want to watch …
The beatings begun –
I don’t want to see …
Chief Inspector Adachi with his short sword drawn; his lips are moving but no words are forming, tears rolling down his cheeks –
Adachi brings the blade of his short sword up close to his face. He stares into the blade, bewitched as the blade catches the light –
His eyes, red spots on white …
‘Revenge! Revenge!’
Blood on the blade …
‘Captain!’
There is fresh blood on the walls and there is fresh blood on the floors, on their knuckles and on their boots, on their shirt cuffs and on their pant legs, tonight the fresh blood is Formosan blood –
The blood on our hands and the blood on our lips …
There are lost teeth and bits of their bones –
We are the Losers. We are the Defeated …
There are screams and then silence.
They will drive their bodies out of the city, out beyond Kokubunji, beyond Tachikawa. They will turn their bodies into ash out among the trees of the Musashino plain. Then they will drive back into the city with the morning light. They will hose down the backs of their trucks. They will set fire to their arrest sheets. They will destroy the custody records. Then they will rewrite history –
Their history. Your history. My history. Our history …
They will tell lie upon lie, lie after lie, until they believe lie upon lie, lie after lie, until they believe there were no custody records. There were no arrest sheets. There were no beatings in the cells. There were no murders in the cells. There were no bloody bodies in the backs of their trucks. There are no ashes and bones out among the Musashino trees. They will tell lie upon lie, lie after lie after lie –
The caretaker and the boiler-man pick up their spades …
Until everyone believes these lies upon lies –
Pick up their spades and begin to heap the dirt …
These lies that everyone tells themselves –
Heap the dirt back into the hole …
Until everyone believes this history –
Back into the hole, over the man …
This history we teach ourselves –
Over the man, faster and faster …
Until I too believe these lies –
Faster and faster, as they …
Until I believe this history –
As they bury his cries …
My lies. My history.
*
Masaoka has heard the screams. Masaoka has heard the silence. Now Masaoka is ready to talk. Now Masaoka is ready to tell us whatever we want to hear. Now she will say whatever we want her to say –
But I am screaming now. Inside. I am shaking. Outside —
‘There were four of us,’ she is saying. ‘Yoshiko, Tominaga Noriko, Shishikura Michiko and me. But after what happened to Yoshiko, then we all went our own separate ways…’
I am shaking. I am repeating, ‘Aged approximately eighteen years old, wearing a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress, a white half-sleeved chemise, dyed-pink socks and a pair of white canvas shoes with red rubber soles…’
Red rubber soles …
I am asking, ‘Does this sound like Tominaga or Shishikura?’
‘It could be Tominaga Noriko,’ says Masaoka. ‘It might be Tominaga. It could be her. Then again, it could be anyone. But…’
I stare at Masaoka Hisae and I ask her, ‘But what?’
‘But I heard that Tominaga is missing,’ she says.
I sit forward. I repeat, ‘Tominaga is missing?’
‘Since sometime in June,’ she says. ‘But…’
I am still staring at Masaoka. ‘But what …?’
‘But you hope it’s her and I hope it isn’t.’
‘You’re wrong,’ I tell her, but Masaoka Hisae is looking past me now, looking over my shoulder to the door –
Chief Inspector Adachi standing in the doorway. Inspector Adachi asking me, ‘What does she know?’
‘Not much,’ I tell him, still looking at Masaoka Hisae –
Shadow and sweat running in rivers down her face …
‘Take this woman home then,’ Chief Inspector Adachi tells Detective Nishi and then he says to me, ‘Let’s walk…’
*
Down another backstreet, up another alleyway, under another lantern, at another counter, Adachi orders the drinks, ‘Whatever you have that won’t send us insane or leave us blind or dead in the morning!’
Send us insane. Leave us blind. Dead in the morning…
The master puts two glasses of clear liquid on the counter –
‘Cheers,’ says Adachi as he raises his glass to mine –
And then adds, ‘But you look terrible, inspector…’
‘I feel terrible,’ I tell him. ‘Worse than terrible.’
‘Because of tonight? The Formosans?’
‘No, but it didn’t help much…’
‘It’s the way things are,’ says Adachi. ‘The way things are.’
‘Well then, I suppose I just don’t like the way things are.’
‘And you think I do?’ asks Adachi. ‘You think I do?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘But you’re surviving and I’m not.’
‘You’re still here,’ he says. ‘You’ve not run.’
‘Where would I go? What would I do?’
‘There’s always the next life…’
Another life. Another name …
‘No thanks,’ I tell him. ‘Twice is too many times for me. Much too many times…’
Adachi drains his glass. Adachi offers me a Lucky Strike. Now Adachi asks, ‘Have you seen Detective Fujita yet?’
I take his cig. I take his light. I tell him, ‘Yes.’
He orders two more drinks. He asks, ‘And?’
I finish my first drink. I say, ‘He’s gone.’
He raises his second glass. ‘Gone?’
I say, ‘And he’s not coming back.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘He told me.’
‘And do you always believe everything people tell you, Inspector Minami?’
‘Not always, Chief Inspector Adachi. But this time I believed what he said, yes.’
‘People say all kinds of things, especially these days.’
‘Not Fujita,’ I tell him. ‘He’s not coming back.’
Adachi puts out his cigarette. Adachi takes another drink. Adachi asks, ‘Do you think Fujita killed Hayashi Jo?’
I put out my cigarette. I say, ‘I don’t know. Not any more.’
‘So you think he might have? You think he had reason?’
I shrug my shoulders. I say, ‘Him and everybody else.’
Adachi drains his second drink. ‘Even you, then?’
I turn to look at Adachi. I ask him, ‘Why me?’
Adachi smiles. Adachi laughs. ‘You’ve got blood on the cuffs of your shirt. You’ve got blood on the legs of your trousers…’
I smile now. I laugh. I say, ‘And so have you…’
‘But mine is fresh blood, corporal.’
*
I have come again to this place. Black bile again. I have walked out of the light and into the shadow. Brown bile again. Into the temple grounds. Yellow bile again. But there is nothing here. Grey bile again. Nothing but the ruin of the old Black Gate. Black bile. Beneath the dark eaves of the Black Gate, I close my eyes. Brown bile. Under the Black Gate, I can hear a stray dog panting. Yellow bile. His house is lost, his master gone. Grey bile. In the ruin of the Black Gate, in the Year of the Dog, I stare at its feet. Black bile, brown bile, yellow bile and grey. I vomit and I vomit and I vomit and I vomit –
Cover the mirrors! Cover the mirrors!
This dog has no feet.
*
In the half-light, Yuki stands up. In the half-light, she picks up an unlined summer kimono draped over the rack by the mirror. In the half-light, Yuki changes into the summer kimono, a pattern printed low upon its skirt. In the half-light, she knots the red and purple striped undersash. In the half-light, Yuki sits back down beside me. In the half-light, she takes a cigarette from the package on the dresser. In the half-light, Yuki lights it. In the half-light, she hands it to me –
‘It was like a fairy tale,’ she smiles. ‘The way we met…’
‘Yes,’ I laugh. ‘A chance meeting in a sudden shower.’
‘A love story from the older traditions,’ she says, but Yuki is not smiling now, she is not laughing, she is crying now –
‘There is tobacco smoke in my eyes,’ she lies –
‘Air raid! Air raid! Here comes an air raid!’
Now she lies back down next to me and she stares up into my eyes. Now she touches her finger to my nose and says, ‘Don’t sleep.’
But there is no more sleep because there is no Calmotin –
But I want to sleep, though I won’t. I want to forget today, though I won’t. I want to forget yesterday. The day before. This week. Last week. This month. Last month. This year. Last year. Every single year I have ever lived, but I won’t forget because I can’t forget. But here, here at least, here I can sometimes forget. For an odd hour –
In her arms. I can forget. Between her thighs. I can forget …
The many things I have left behind. The things I have lost –
I have failed you. I have failed you. I have failed you …
The many things I have seen. The things I have done –
Hour after hour. Day after day. Week after week …
The blood on the walls. The blood on the floor –
Month after month and year after year …
The blood on the cuffs of my shirt –
But in the half-light, I can’t forget…
On the legs of my trousers –
I am sorry. I am sorry …
Here, in the half-light –
I have failed you all…
In the half-light.
Tokyo, 90°, very fine
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
It is dawn now and the first trains have already been and gone. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I wipe my face and I wipe my neck. There is no shadow here. No respite from the heat. I am standing at the end of my own street, watching the gate to my own house –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I walk down the street to my own house. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I open the gate to my own house. I wipe my face and I wipe my neck again. I go up the path to my own house. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I open the door to my house. I wipe my face and I wipe my neck. I stand in the genkan of my own house –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
The house is silent. The mats are rotting. The house still sleeping. The doors in shreds. I place the envelope of money and the bundle of food on the floor of the reception room. The walls are falling in. The house smells of my children –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I turn their shoes to face the door –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton …
I turn away and I walk away, itching and scratching, gari-gari, wiping my face and wiping my neck, as I start to run, to run away.
*
Tominaga Noriko’s last known address was in Ōimachi, near to where Abe Yoshiko’s body was found. Near to where Kodaira Yoshio works. Kodaira country. Near to where Miyazaki Mitsuko was murdered. Near to where Yuki lives. My country …
Tominaga Noriko’s landlady invites me into her house and then up the stairs to Tominaga Noriko’s rented little room at the end of the second-floor passage, next to a bathroom –
‘I dust,’ she says. ‘But, other than that, it’s just as she left it.’
‘Why is that?’ I ask her. ‘Why don’t you rent it out again?’
‘The same reason I reported her missing, I suppose.’
‘Why?’ I ask her again. ‘Just another tenant …?’
The landlady goes over to the small window and opens it. She shakes her head. ‘But Noriko wasn’t just another tenant, you see…
‘She’d lost both her parents and her younger sister in the March air raids, her elder brother still missing in China…
‘I have no one either now, you see. My husband is long dead and my sons are both dead too, one killed in the south early on and one killed in the north. My eldest was married but he had no children, his wife already remarried. I don’t begrudge or blame her, these are the times we live in, but I have no one now but this house which was spared and the people who live here…
‘Noriko had been here just over six months, a very pretty girl, a very polite and very friendly girl. Because of all your inquiries after the murder of her friend, I know now the kind of life Noriko led, but I never ever would have guessed…
‘Noriko was so very quick to share whatever extra food or clothing she managed to get hold of, no matter what she had done for it, no matter what it had cost her…’
‘Asobu …? Asobu …?’
I nod. I ask, ‘So when did Miss Tominaga go missing?’
‘About a month after her friend was killed, I think.’
‘So that would be early to mid July?’
‘Yes,’ agrees the landlady. ‘But it was definitely before the fifteenth of July because that was the date that the rent was due on her room. And so that was when I became worried…’
‘So when did you report her missing?’
‘Not until the start of this month.’
I ask her, ‘Why did you wait?’
‘I thought she might have just gone off for a bit, you see. Because of what had happened to her friend, because of all your investigations into her and her friends, because of all your questions, because of all your insinuations…’
‘So if Miss Tominaga had just gone off for a bit, where do you think she would have gone?’
Tominaga Noriko’s landlady turns away now. Tominaga Noriko’s landlady looks out of the window and does not answer –
‘You said she might have just gone off for a bit; so where?’
The landlady shakes her head. ‘It’s too late. She’s dead.’
‘You don’t know that,’ I say. ‘Maybe she’s scared.’
The landlady shakes her head again. ‘It’s too late.’
‘Maybe she just got scared and she ran away.’
Tominaga Noriko’s landlady walks over to an old wooden chest of drawers. Tominaga Noriko’s landlady opens the drawers. Tominaga Noriko’s landlady says, ‘But Noriko would never leave all her clothes behind, never leave all her cosmetics…’
‘But you don’t know that for certain,’ I tell her again. ‘People’s plans can change quickly these days.’
‘But Noriko would never not say goodbye,’ she tells me. ‘She would never leave like that, you see.’
I walk over to the chest of drawers. I touch the clothes inside. I walk over to the dresser. I touch the jars of cosmetics. I take the cover off the mirror. I touch the glass –
‘Does this become me…?’
I say, ‘There was a man, wasn’t there?’
Tominaga Noriko’s landlady catches a sob in her throat, puts a hand to her mouth. Now Tominaga Noriko’s landlady closes the drawers, covers the mirror and says, ‘You should know, detective.’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask. ‘How should I know?’
‘He was one of you, wasn’t he?’ she whispers –
‘She was seeing a policeman?’
‘For all the good it did her.’
Now I take out my notebook but I do not open it. I ask her, ‘Did you ever see Miss Tominaga wear a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress over a white half-sleeved chemise…’
The woman is crying. The woman nodding now –
‘Dyed-pink socks and white canvas shoes…’
Nodding now and crying and crying –
‘With red rubber soles…’
‘Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes!’ she is crying as she opens the drawers again, pulling out the clothes and sending them into the air as she frantically searches for a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress, a white half-sleeved chemise and a pair of dyed-pink socks –
But these clothes are not here and neither am I –
Our body has a name. Our case closed …
I am running back down the stairs now –
Case closed! Case closed! Case …
Out of the house and straight into the face of a uniformed policeman asking, ‘Are you Inspector Minami?’
‘What is it?’ I ask him. ‘What is it?’
‘Excuse me, sir,’ he says. ‘There is a meeting of all divisions, sections, and rooms at Metropolitan Headquarters…’
‘How did you know you’d find me here?’
‘Chief Inspector Adachi told me I’d find you here, sir.’
*
The chiefs of all the divisions are here. The heads of all the sections. The heads of every room. The chiefs of every single police station.
The Victors have also sent their observers and their spies; their Nisei translators; their collaborators in their turncoats; race traitors, these banana boys, with their yellow skins and white hearts –
‘Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu …? Asobu …?’
Down at the very front of the room, Fujimoto Yoshio, the chief of the Metropolitan Police Defence Bureau, stands up and begins his speech about the events of last night –
‘Gentlemen, as you know, though such cases have occurred before in Osaka and in Kobe, this is the first case of Formosans openly attacking a police station in Tokyo…
‘Details remain sketchy for now; however, it is reported that approximately five hundred Formosans, possibly aided by a further five hundred Chinese and Korean allies, all of whom are angry at their perceived exclusion from the New Life Market in Shimbashi, boarded at least five trucks at the Yaesu entrance of Tokyo station at about 7 p.m. last night. They then drove to the site of this Shimbashi New Life Market, where they rode about in a repetition of previous incidents at the market, hoping to confront members of the former Matsuda group. However, as the market is temporarily closed, there were no members of the Matsuda group present on this occasion and no confrontation occurred there. There are reports, however, that a few machine-gun bursts were heard…
‘But finding no Matsuda group members at the Shimbashi New Life Market, the Formosans then headed in their trucks for the Shibuya precinct station and, on arriving there at approximately 9 p.m., they were met by over two hundred policemen who had been assigned to guard the station…
‘Police initially stopped the trucks but then allowed them to pass when the Formosans insisted they were there only to peacefully visit the Kakyō Sōkai headquarters at the request of representatives of the Chinese Mission to Tokyo. However, as the trucks passed through the police lines, occupants of at least one truck opened fire on the police, aiming at the chief of the Shibuya police and seriously wounding two officers…’
Bang! Bang! …
‘The officers were left with little alternative but to defend themselves and respond with revolvers. A fifteen-minute gun battle then ensued, wounding a further four officers, two seriously, and killing six Formosans and wounding a score more. The battle was waged with at least two machine guns, set up by the Formosans in their trucks, as well as with pistols, knives, staves, clubs, pickaxes and other weapons. One Formosan truck also ran up onto a sidewalk, injuring many of the passengers but allowing us to arrest twenty-seven of the Formosan occupants. Revolvers, iron clubs, wooden clubs and bottles of gasoline were also found inside the truck…’
These lies that everyone tells themselves …
‘Unfortunately, the vast majority of the Formosans involved in this incident escaped during the course of the gun battle and the ensuing melee. These Formosan suspects remain at large…’
Until everyone believes this history …
‘Furthermore, earlier yesterday evening the ōji police station was also surrounded and attacked by a group of twenty to thirty Koreans, resulting in the hospitalization of Police Chief Hashioka of ōji police station and the death of one Korean man…
‘It is believed that the incident began at around 5 p.m. last night and grew out of a dispute between Japanese and Korean stall-operators in front of ōji train station in which approximately forty or fifty people were involved in a fist fight…
‘Police were called to restore order and to arrest the perpetrators, detaining them at the ōji police station. It was at this point that the group of twenty to thirty Koreans surrounded the police station and began to stone the building. Police Chief Hashioka of ōji police station went outside to remonstrate with the crowd and was himself then surrounded and stoned. Police Chief Hashioka was left with no alternative but to discharge his pistol in self-defence. His shots unfortunately pierced the lower abdomen of one of the Koreans, fatally wounding him…’
Bang! Bang! …
‘However, the firing of the shot undoubtedly brought the dispute under control and order was restored. Police Chief Hashioka was then taken to the Imperial University Hospital where, we have been told, he will take about ten days to recover from his injuries.
‘Finally, during the course of last night, there were also five separate reports of fights between rival Korean gangs, resulting in many injuries and much damage to property. The headquarters of the Youth League for the Promotion of Korean Independence at Denenchōfu in Ōmori Ward was attacked at around 5 a.m. by approximately three hundred Koreans in a number of trucks and vehicles, breaking windows, tables and chairs…
‘As a result of information received, a comprehensive roundup of suspects in the Komatsugawa, Sunamachi and Kameido districts has been ordered…’
Bang! Bang! …
‘But enough is enough!’ shouts Chief Fujimoto now –
‘The restoration and maintenance of order must be our priority as both policemen and as Japanese!
‘The Tokyo Metropolitan Police will detail extra guards at all police stations with instructions to fire back in the event of a renewal or repetition of last night’s attack…’
Bang! Bang! …
‘To fire back not for the purpose of wounding or killing but for the arrest of the attackers and for restoring order because the restoration and the maintenance of order must be our priority…
‘Extra guards have also been assigned to the Shimbashi Market and other markets believed to be potential targets…
‘Today we will also urge the operators of all markets to tighten their own security and to cooperate fully with police in order to restore and maintain order in Tokyo…’
Bang! Bang! …
‘But we will continue to urge them to accommodate legitimate businesses run by Chinese, Formosan and Korean operators inside their markets. We will also continue to offer ourselves as arbitrators and mediators in the case of any disputes…
‘But enough is enough!’ shouts Chief Fujimoto again –
‘Restore order! Maintain order! Dismissed!’
*
Things never change. There are wars and there are restorations. Things never change. There are wars and there are victories. Things never change. There are wars and there are defeats. Things never change. There are occupations and there are elections. Things never change. Because there is always a second meeting. Things never change. There is always a second meeting to discuss the first –
Never change. Never change. Never change …
For everyone to discuss the best ways in which to ignore the conclusions of the first meeting; for everyone to pretend that the first meeting never actually took place; to promise to keep things exactly the way they were before the first meeting –
Never change. Never change …
‘What a mess, what a mess, what a mess,’ our chief is saying over and over, again and again. ‘The Victors will be talking about the corruption of the police and the failure of justice again, warning of the growth of racketeering and the power of the underground, moaning about the mistreatment of minorities and the rebirth of nationalism. The Victors will be wanting more reviews and more reforms, watching us like hawks…’
Never change …
‘But the Victors must let the markets reopen,’ says Adachi. ‘This whole situation is a direct result of SCAP’s campaign against the markets. I know they want to stop the hoarding and the pilfering of goods meant for rations, to keep these goods out of the markets so they are free to be distributed as rations at the official prices…
‘But the markets and the vendors are only fulfilling a demand. By closing the markets and then failing to meet that demand, the Victors are only creating further hunger and frustration…
‘And then, by forcing the markets to change, by limiting the number of stalls, insisting on licences, then the Victors are again only creating frustration among the excluded minorities…’
‘Chief Inspector Adachi is exactly right,’ agrees Kanehara. ‘A colleague from Chiba was telling me about this large catch of sardines that was brought ashore. The regular rationing organization was not properly equipped to handle such a catch. There was not enough ice to keep the fish from spoiling. There were not enough trucks available to bring the catch into Tokyo. Furthermore, the official price for the catch was so low that it couldn’t cover the cost of the boats, the fishermen, the storage or the transportation…’
‘So what happened to it all?’ asks Inspector Kai.
‘Well, this is my very point,’ says Chief Inspector Kanehara. ‘What would have happened last month, back when the markets were allowed to open, is that news of such a big catch would have caused a hoard of small stall-holders to descend on Chiba. They would have bought up the entire catch directly from the fishermen for cash. The stall-holders would then have brought the fish on their own backs into Tokyo in a couple of hours and would have had those sardines on their stalls within the day. Yes, the price would be higher than the official price but there would have been so much and from so many competing vendors that the price could not go too high…’
‘What happened this time?’ asks Kai again.
‘A very small proportion of the catch was sold at a very high price to one of the gangs,’ says Kanehara.
‘And the rest of it?’ asks Kai.
‘It was all allowed to rot,’ says Chief Inspector Kanehara. ‘And what could be salvaged was then turned into fertilizer.’
Things never change. Things never change …
There is silence around the table now –
Never change. Never change …
There is silence until Chief Kita says, ‘Chief Fujimoto wants us to keep out of the Shibuya and Shimbashi areas. Unfortunately, because of the Abe and Midorikawa cases, and because of the suspect Kodaira, we cannot keep out of the Shibuya area but we can refrain from using the Shibuya police station. Also, because of the proximity to Shiba Park, there is no way for us to avoid using the Atago police station. However, before you or any of your teams enter either Shibuya or the Shimbashi Market area, I want you to first request permission from Headquarters –
Things never change …
‘I don’t want any of my men caught in the crossfire!’
*
I go to the bathroom down the corridor. I do not vomit. I go into a cubicle. I do not vomit. I lock the door. I do not vomit. I stare into the bowl. I do not vomit. I stare at the stains. I do not vomit. I smell the ammonia. I do not vomit. The insects and the heat. I do not vomit. I wait for fifteen minutes inside the cubicle. I do not vomit. Now I unlock the cubicle door. I do not vomit. I rinse my face in the sink. I do not vomit. I do not look up into that mirror. I do not vomit …
I go back down the corridor. I knock on the door to the chief’s office. I open the door. I step inside. I apologize. I bow –
‘I am sorry to disturb you again,’ I tell the chief. ‘But I would be very grateful if you could spare me a moment…’
But today the chief does not offer me a seat or any tea. Today the chief does not even look up. He just asks, ‘What is it now…?’
‘I didn’t have a chance to update you on our progress…’
Now the chief looks up. ‘You’ve made some progress?’
‘I feel we have a strong lead which I’d like to pursue.’
‘Go on then, detective, what is this strong lead…’
‘Well, as you know, we managed to locate Masaoka Hisae, who was one of Abe Yoshiko’s friends. Well, Masaoka told me that the description of the second body found at Shiba Park resembled that of another of her friends, Tominaga Noriko…’
‘Along with hundreds of other girls…’
‘But this Tominaga girl is missing…’
‘And who reported her missing?’
‘Her landlady,’ I tell the chief. ‘And the dates fit because, although the landlady didn’t report Tominaga missing until the first of this month, she said Tominaga actually went missing between the ninth and fifteenth of last month…’
‘That’s it?’ asks the chief.
‘Far from it,’ I tell him. ‘The landlady also confirmed that Tominaga Noriko wore clothes exactly like those that were found on the body at Shiba. A search of the missing girl’s room and possessions revealed that these clothes are also missing…’
Now the chief is interested. ‘Go on, detective…’
‘Masaoka has confirmed that Kodaira knew Abe Yoshiko. Masaoka also confirmed that Kodaira knew Tominaga Noriko…’
‘But that doesn’t make her the dead body in Shiba Park.’
‘Faced with this evidence, Kodaira will confess…’
‘Faced with what evidence exactly, detective?’ asks the chief. ‘A missing girl had the same dress as a murdered girl? A missing girl was an acquaintance of another murdered girl?’
‘But the dates are exactly right…’
‘Have the landlady view the body then,’ says the chief.
‘But there is no body,’ I tell him. ‘It’s just bones’
‘You have her clothes, don’t you, detective?’
I nod. I say, ‘They’re still up at Keiō.’
‘Well, if she can positively identify them, through a repair or through a tear or anything, then that will be the evidence, won’t it?’
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘And there was one other thing…’
‘Quickly then,’ says the chief. ‘What is it?’
‘I’d like to know the name of the uniformed officer who was dismissed during the initial Abe investigation?’
‘Why do you want to know that?’
‘He might know where the rest of Abe’s friends have gone or he might even be able to assist in any possible identification…’
‘No,’ says the chief. ‘Now is not the time.’
‘I understand that,’ I tell the chief. ‘Then would it be possible for me to speak with former Chief Inspector Mori…’
‘You know where Mori is?’ laughs the chief –
The Matsuzawa Hospital for the Insane …
‘Yes, but I thought he might still…’
I don’t want to remember …
‘And I thought you would have seen enough of that place…’
The blood-flecked scroll on the wall behind his desk …
‘Inspector Mori might know what happened…’
But in the half-light, I can’t forget…
‘What happened is in the file. What he knew is in the file. There are no shortcuts, detective. Not any more,’ says the chief –
The best friend my father ever had …
‘Now go back to your men –
‘Go back to your men,’ he shouts. ‘And lead your men!’
*
I do not take a different route back to Atago today. I take the same route I took two days ago. I take the same route past the bar in the basement of the three-storey reinforced concrete shell –
I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to …
I walk down the stairs but the door is closed today. I turn the handle and the door opens. I step inside the bar but the room is pitch-black. I look around the place but everything is rubble and ruin. I turn round and I go back up the stairs. I stand at the top of the stairs in the harsh white daylight, finding my bearings –
But everything looks the same …
The concrete shell, the blown-out rooms, the exposed girders. The young man still in his uniform who asks, ‘You lost something?’
‘There was a bar here,’ I tell him. ‘What happened to it?’
‘Can’t you guess?’ laughs the man. ‘A bomb fell on it.’
‘No, no, no,’ I say. ‘I was only here two days ago…’
‘You’ve got the wrong place then,’ he says. ‘This was one of those People’s Bars. More than a hundred people were trapped and burned alive in there when the building took a direct hit…’
‘But I was here two days ago,’ I tell him again.
‘Well, you were drinking with ghosts then.’
I stand in the harsh white daylight –
In the harsh white daylight –
‘Is your watch broken, sir?’
The daylight which looks like raindrops. The raindrops good upon my face. My face to the sky. The sky blue not grey, high not low across the city. The city standing tall and shining bright in a neon night. A neon night reflected on my face. My face wet with the raindrops. The raindrops nothing but my tears. My tears in the daylight. The city fallen and drab, the sky grey and low –
‘You were drinking with ghosts then…’
Fallen and drab, grey and low –
Now he shows me the watch …
In that harsh white daylight –
It still says twelve o’clock.
*
I am late, yet again. I am looking in a mirror. Detective Nishi is standing on the steps outside Atago police station. I am looking in a mirror. Detective Nishi is looking for me. I am looking in a mirror. Detective Nishi is waiting for me. I am looking in a mirror. Detective Nishi wants a word. I am looking in a mirror. Detective Nishi looks like shit. I am looking in a mirror. Detective Nishi looks like he hasn’t slept. I am looking in a mirror. Detective Nishi telling me, ‘Kodaira Yoshio has a mistress. Near Meguro…’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Masaoka told me.’
‘Told you when?’
‘Last night,’ he says. ‘When I took her back to her room.’
‘Why didn’t she mention it before? At the station?’
‘She didn’t think it was of any importance.’
I look at him. I ask, ‘Did you fuck her?’
He looks away. He shakes his head –
‘You’re a bad liar, Nishi-kun.’
He starts to speak. He stops.
‘Did you pay her for it?’
‘I bought her a meal,’ says Nishi. ‘I bought her some drinks. I gave her a pack of cigarettes.’
‘And now that’s all your money gone until the end of the month,’ I say. ‘All your food and all your cigarettes…’
Nishi looks away again. Nishi nods.
I take out one hundred yen from my trouser pocket. I stuff it into his shirt pocket. I say, ‘And you got a screw and a break in the case. Well done, detective…’
‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘Are you going to tell Chief Inspector Kanehara and Detective Inspector Kai about this mistress?’
‘No,’ I tell him. ‘We’ll go and bring her in ourselves.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ says Nishi and then he adds, ‘There was one other thing; about the Miyazaki Mitsuko file —’
‘What about it?’ I snap. ‘What?’
‘I think I know who took it —’
‘Who?’ I ask. ‘Who…?’
‘I was thinking about that day,’ he says. ‘The day of the case, the day of the surrender last year. Only Detective Fujita and —’
‘You think Detective Fujita took the file?’
‘Well, I didn’t even go to the scene of the crime,’ he says. ‘And so I had no idea there was even a Metro file on the case. But Detective Fujita was there. Detective Fujita would have known…’
‘So you think Fujita signed the file out using your name?’
Nishi nods. ‘Who else could it have been?’
‘Detective Fujita’s face is well known,’ I tell him. ‘The duty officer wouldn’t record your name instead…’
‘Unless he had an incentive,’ says Nishi. ‘Or unless Fujita used a stooge to sign for it using my name.’
‘A stooge?’ I ask. ‘Like who?’
‘Detective Ishida, maybe.’
‘Have you spoken to Ishida about the Miyazaki file yet?’
Nishi shakes his head. ‘I wanted to speak to you first.’
‘Good man,’ I tell him. ‘Now leave it to me.’
But Nishi won’t leave it to me. Now Nishi says, ‘Yet I still don’t understand why Detective Fujita would want that file —’
‘I’ll find out,’ I say. ‘So you forget the file now.’
‘But you do believe it wasn’t me who took it?’
I nod. I say, ‘Only because you’re such a bad liar, detective.’
*
Back up the stairs. Lead your men. Lead your men. Back to the borrowed second-floor room. I must see Ishida. Back to the questions and the doubts in their eyes. Lead your men. Lead your men. Back to the dissent and the hate. I must find that file. But there’s no drop in temperature here. Lead your men. Lead your men. No change in circumstances. No Ishida. No file. This room is still an oven, their breakfast still zōsui; zōsui still their only meal. Lead your men. Lead your men. Unwashed and unshaven, they have not seen their wives or their children, their lovers or their bastards, in well over a week –
Lead your men! Lead your men! Lead your men …
Sanada, Hattori, Takeda, Shimoda, Nishi and Kimura; I count my men again and then ask them, ‘Where is Detective Ishida?’
They shrug their shoulders. They shake their heads –
I say to Takeda, ‘I thought he was with you.’
‘He was yesterday,’ says Takeda.
‘He was with you all day?’
‘Yesterday, he was…’
‘What about today?’
Detective Takeda shakes his head. Takeda looks at the others. Takeda says, ‘Not today.’
The other detectives shake their heads again. The others agree, ‘Not seen him today.’
Now Hattori says, ‘Maybe he’s looking for Detective Fujita.’
‘What do you mean by that remark, detective?’ I ask him –
Hattori shrugs his shoulders. Hattori says, ‘Nothing.’
‘Forget about Ishida,’ I tell them all. ‘But, if you do see him, you tell him to remain here until he has spoken to me. And you tell him, if he leaves again, then he leaves for good…’
The detectives nod their heads.
‘Anyway, I have some much better news for you now,’ I say. ‘I have a possible name for our body; Tominaga Noriko –
‘Tominaga was a friend of Abe Yoshiko who, as you know, we believe may also have been murdered by the suspect Kodaira. Tominaga has been missing since the second week of July and she was known to wear clothing the same as that found on our body…’
But there is no applause. There are still only doubts –
Lead your men! Lead your men! Lead your men …
Now I divide them into pairs again. Lead your men. I send Detectives Takeda and Kimura back to Tominaga Noriko’s landlady in Ōimachi. Lead your men. I send them back to find out every last detail she knows about her former tenant’s life. Lead your men. I send them back to arrange for her to come to the Keiō University Hospital tomorrow in order to view the clothes found on the body –
Lead your men! Lead your men …
I send Detectives Sanada and Shimoda back to Masaoka Hisae in Shibuya. Lead your men. I send them back to find out every last detail she knows about her friend’s life –
Lead your men …
I leave Hattori in the borrowed second-floor room to wait for Ishida. Lead your men. Then I tell Detective Nishi to come with me.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ says Detective Hattori. ‘But what about Ishihara Michiko and Ōzeki Hiromi? What about Tanabe Shimeko and Honma Fumiko? What about Konuma Yasuyo and Sugai Seiko?’
Lead your men! Lead your men! Lead your men …
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘What did you find out?’
Lead your men! Lead your men …
‘Nothing,’ spits Hattori –
Lead your men…!
‘Thank you, detective,’ I say. ‘Thank you very much.’
*
Masaoka Hisae gave Detective Nishi the name of Kodaira’s mistress as one Okayama Hisayo and her address as being somewhere near Meguro, near the police station where Kodaira is now being held. Detective Nishi worked quickly and found a current address for an Okayama Hisayo, listed as living in an apartment building half-way between Meguro and Gotanda, so we walk down to Hamamatsu-chō station, take the Yamate loop train, getting off at Gotanda station –
Another shabby neighbourhood, another shabby building …
Kodaira Yoshio’s mistress lives in an apartment building on a bluff overlooking the Meguro River. There are Western-style houses near here but they have all been requisitioned by the Victors and are now tightly guarded. Okayama Hisayo’s apartment building is on the very edge of the bluff, level with the elevated line of the National Railway, level with the noise of the trains. And, while we are climbing the stairs to her apartment, it finally dawns on me that this building is one of the addresses we have listed for Kodaira Yoshio, that he and his wife used to live in this very building –
Another shabby apartment …
Nishi and I knock on the door of Okayama Hisayo’s apartment, opening it and apologizing for disturbing her, for calling on her unannounced, introducing ourselves –
Another shabby room …
Okayama Hisayo is a plain, pale-skinned woman in her forties. She kneels down in the entrance to her apartment. She bows. She welcomes us. She apologizes for the poor state of her apartment. She invites us in. She has been expecting us, waiting for us –
She does not ask why we are here.
Nishi and I sit at her stained, low table in her hot, overcast room. We refuse her offer of tea. We apologize again for disturbing her, for calling on her unannounced –
But she is insisting on giving us tea, apologizing for having no snacks, leaving us alone in her room while she ducks behind a curtain to bring us some tea –
I turn away to look out of her window but the view is partially obstructed by a thick growth of trees near the edge of the cliff, though I can still see the Togoshi-Ebara heights rising beyond the Meguro River, still see the barrack houses going up, the light industry returning, but all else is burnt and ruined; the old feudal villas, their gardens now overgrown parks, their ponds diseased pools –
‘It was originally a place for mistresses, up here,’ says Okayama Hisayo, placing two glasses of cold tea on the low table. ‘The founder of the Shibaura Company was actually the man who first bought this land to build an apartment for his mistress. It used to be quite a fashionable address but the building has changed hands so many times now it has become quite run down…’
‘It must still have some luck left though,’ I say. ‘To have escaped all the bombs and the fires.’
‘Because it’s up on a hill,’ she says. ‘And because of the railway and the river…’
‘Do you see much of the other tenants?’ I ask. ‘Do you know your neighbours?’
‘Not really,’ she says. ‘They used to be quite fussy in their choice of tenants. But the war changed all that. It turned back the clock. It’s all hostesses and mistresses again now, balladeers and gangsters who sublet the rooms for hourly uses…’
‘This building is also used as a hotel, then?’ Nishi asks her. ‘For prostitutes and their clients?’
‘Every evening,’ she says. ‘Different women, different men.’
‘And so do you know where they solicit their clients?’
‘They work the cheap cafés near Gotanda station.’
‘Each night?’ Nishi asks. ‘Different men?’
‘The sound of laughter,’ she says. ‘And then of tears.’
I ask her, ‘And so what do you do, Mrs. Okayama?’
‘I work the cheap cafés near Gotanda station.’
Another plain woman, another shabby room, another shabby apartment, another shabby building, another shabby neighbourhood.
‘Is that how you first met Kodaira Yoshio?’
Mrs. Okayama shakes her head and says, ‘I am a widow now, but my husband was a bus driver. I met him when I worked as a bus girl. Mr. Kodaira’s wife worked as a bus girl too. That’s how I became friendly with his wife and it was her I knew first. Then, when the apartment downstairs fell vacant, I suggested Mrs. Kodaira and her husband move in. She then became pregnant and went back to her family home in Toyama to have the child. Because of the wartime situation, Mrs. Kodaira and the new baby stayed on in Toyama…’
‘And so, when his wife was evacuated to Toyama, that was when you first became intimate with Kodaira?’ asks Nishi.
‘Mr. Kodaira had to stay on in Tokyo,’ says the widow. ‘And so his wife asked my daughter and me to take good care of him. But actually it was Mr. Kodaira who took care of us as he always had some extra food, he always had sweets and tobacco…’
‘And what did he ask in exchange?’ asks Nishi. ‘For his extra food, his sweets and his tobacco…?’
‘His wife had been pregnant,’ she says. ‘And then she was evacuated. He was alone and I…’
‘Did Kodaira ever mention anyone called Tominaga Noriko?’ I ask the Widow Okayama. ‘Did he ever mention an Abe Yoshiko?’
‘I know I wasn’t the only one,’ she says. ‘I know there were even others in this very building. Others who were not widows, like me. Others whose husbands were soldiers…’
‘But did you ever hear Kodaira talk about or ever see him with a girl aged approximately seventeen to eighteen years old; a girl you might have seen wearing a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress over a white half-sleeved chemise?’
I think about her all the time …
‘My daughter Kazuko had a dress just like that,’ she says. ‘Where is your daughter?’ I ask. ‘Does she live here?’ Mrs. Okayama shakes her head. ‘I sent her away.’
‘Where did you send her? When was this?’
‘May last year,’ she says. ‘To Tochigi.’
The place where Kodaira is from …
‘Did your daughter know Kodaira?’ asks Detective Nishi. ‘Did your daughter ever meet Kodaira?’
Mrs. Okayama nods. ‘Why do you think I sent her away?’
‘You sent her away because of Kodaira?’ asks Nishi. ‘Why?’
‘Because I knew he liked my daughter, not me. But she wouldn’t sleep with him and I would. He would screw me while she slept beside us; screw me while he stared at her…’
‘How often did he come here?’ asks Detective Nishi. ‘How often did you let Kodaira sleep with you?’
‘Mr. Kodaira had an appetite,’ says the Widow Okayama. ‘Mr. Kodaira was always hungry…’
‘And was Kodaira violent with it?’ I ask the widow. ‘With his appetite, with his hunger?’
She haunts me …
Mrs. Okayama shakes her head. ‘As long as you lay still.’
‘He never forced you to have sex with him?’ I ask her.
‘We had to be quiet so we did not wake my daughter.’
‘Did Kodaira ever put his hands around your neck?’
‘I said it was like pretending to be dead…’
‘Did he ever try to strangle you?’
‘He said, we already are.’
We’re already dead…
And then she says, suddenly from out of the silence, she says, ‘I think death follows him, it must follow him wherever he goes…’
Death follows us, as we follow death …
‘What do you mean?’ I ask her –
‘After I had sent my daughter away to Tochigi Prefecture, to live with my own mother, her grandmother, Mr. Kodaira kept asking and asking about her, saying we should go and visit her, saying we should see how she was, how we could go there to get kaidashi, to stock up on supplies. You don’t know him, but Mr. Kodaira is a relentless man and he is a persuasive man and so last June, this would have been about a month after my daughter left, Mr. Kodaira and I went to Tochigi to visit my mother and my daughter…’
Death is everywhere. Death is everywhere …
But Nishi can’t wait. Nishi can’t let her finish. Nishi asks, ‘You said death follows Kodaira; what do you mean?’
‘Well, I only accompanied Mr. Kodaira to Tochigi that once,’ she says. ‘But I heard from my mother and my daughter that he has been back there on a number of other occasions…’
Nishi still can’t wait, can’t let her finish. Nishi asks her again, ‘But your mother and daughter are still alive?’
‘Of course they are,’ says Mrs. Okayama. ‘But my daughter told me someone had been murdered…’
Nishi asks, ‘Murdered where?’
‘In Kanuma,’ she says. ‘Near to the house where my mother and daughter are living…’
*
Detective Nishi and I take Mrs. Okayama to the Meguro police station. We take her upstairs. We sit her in a chair at a table in an interview room. We give her a glass of cold tea. We offer her a cigarette. Then we ask her to tell us again all the things she has told us before. We ask her about her late husband. We ask her about her mother. We ask her about her daughter. We ask her about the house in Kanuma. We ask her for the dates. We ask her for the places –
Personal things. Private things …
We ask about her lover. We ask about their sex –
Dirty things …
We bow. We thank her. We send her back home. We do not tell her that her former lover is sitting in the very next interview room, smoking our cigarettes and telling us jokes –
Dirty jokes.
*
Kodaira Yoshio is sat at the interview table, enjoying a cigarette and a joke with Chief Inspector Kanehara and Inspector Kai, a dirty joke from a dirty mouth. But Kodaira still notices when Adachi and I take our seats at the back of the room, he still notices the stenographer take a seat, through the smiles and the smoke Kodaira sees it all –
‘Come on, Mr. Kodaira,’ Kanehara laughs. ‘Tell us.’
Kodaira shrugs. Kodaira smiles. ‘Tell you what?’
‘The youngest piece of pussy you’ve ever had?’
Kodaira shrugs again. Kodaira’s smile widens –
‘A man like you, you’ve had so much cunt…’
Kodaira laughing now, shakes his head –
‘Don’t be modest, we’re all friends…’
Kodaira stops laughing and sighs –
‘You’re right,’ he says. ‘It’s true I’ve had a lot of pussy and all kinds of pussy at that; Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Filipino, Russian, French, Australian, American…’
‘You’ve had American pussy?’ exclaims Inspector Kai. ‘When did you have some of that?’
‘When I was in the Imperial Japanese Navy,’ laughs Kodaira. ‘A whore in every port.’
‘Go on then, tell us,’ says Kai. ‘What’s white pussy like?’
‘It’s big and fucking hairy,’ laughs Kodaira. ‘Very big.’
‘So you prefer a tight pussy?’ asks Kai. ‘Very tight?’
‘What true Japanese man doesn’t?’ laughs Kodaira. ‘You like a big huge bucket of a cunt to slop that tiny little cock of yours around in, do you Inspector Kai? Do you…?’
And we all laugh along with him. We all laugh along with our mouths wet and our cocks hard …
‘I prefer to put it in a new pot,’ he winks. ‘A clean pot.’
‘So the tighter the pussy, the better?’ asks Kanehara –
Kodaira raises an imaginary glass and nods his head.
‘And so the younger the pussy, the better then?’
‘I like the taste of cherry on my cock,’ laughs Kodaira again. ‘What true Japanese man doesn’t like to admire the first buds upon the cherry tree and then watch the blossoms fall…?’
‘That’s very poetically put,’ says Kanehara. ‘Very poetic.’
Kodaira asks, ‘And who here doesn’t agree with me?’
And we all nod along with him. We all nod along…
‘So what is the earliest bud you’ve ever admired?’
Kodaira looks up at Kanehara and winks at him –
‘Come on,’ says Kanehara. ‘You’re teasing…’
‘I don’t really like them too young,’ admits Kodaira. ‘You see I’m a man who also likes a bit of chest, a bit of tit to suckle and to chew on, if you gentlemen understand what I mean?’
And we all nod along with him again …
‘So, generally, sixteen years old or so would be my limit…’
‘And there’s nothing wrong with that,’ says Kai –
But Kodaira doesn’t answer him. Kodaira stares at Kai and then around the room; Kodaira has stopped laughing now. Kodaira has stopped smiling now. Now Kodaira whispers, ‘But a man could have any age he wanted in China. Any age at all…’
‘And did you take any age you wanted?’ I ask him –
And Kodaira turns to look at me. And Kodaira recognizes me. And Kodaira laughs and tells me, ‘You were there, detective. I’m sure you saw what I saw. I’m sure you did what I did…’
No one laughing along, no one nodding now …
Adachi is on his feet. Adachi says, ‘Enough of this shit —’
Kodaira turns away from me. Kodaira looks at Adachi –
‘You knew a fifteen-year-old girl called Abe Yoshiko. Abe Yoshiko hung around the barracks where you work. Abe Yoshiko and three of her friends were selling their cunts to the Shinchū Gun for leftovers and scraps. You fucked Abe Yoshiko and gave her scraps. On or around the ninth of June this year, you raped her, you strangled her and then you hid her body under a burnt-out truck in the scrapyard of the Shiba Transportation Company, didn’t you…?’
Kodaira shaking his head, Kodaira whispering to himself –
‘We have witnesses,’ says Adachi. ‘We have statements.’
Kodaira nodding his head now, Kodaira muttering –
‘Be the man you are,’ shouts Adachi. ‘And confess!’
Kodaira is still. Now Kodaira says, ‘Then I did it.’
‘Did what?’ asks Adachi. ‘Tell us every detail.’
‘I killed Abe,’ he says. ‘But I didn’t rape her.’
‘Really?’ asks Adachi. ‘Tell us why not?’
Kodaira laughs, ‘She was too young.’
*
‘Excellent work, Inspector Minami,’ says Adachi. ‘Excellent work.’
‘If there’s something you want,’ I tell him. ‘Just ask me.’
‘You know what I want,’ he whispers. ‘I told you last night; I want to talk to Fujita; to talk to him about the murder of Hayashi Jo.’
‘I told you,’ I say. ‘Fujita’s gone and I don’t know where.’
‘Really?’ he says. ‘I thought a good night’s sleep might have cleared your head, might have helped you remember who your real friends are; might have helped you to see things more clearly, see things my way, the clever way, the right way, the only way…’
‘I didn’t sleep at all last night and I don’t know where he is.’
‘That’s a great shame,’ he says. ‘A very great shame.’
‘It might well be a great shame but it’s also the truth.’
‘No, it’s a great shame because it means you’re going to have to go down to the Shimbashi Market and ask your new friend Senju Akira if he knows where his old friend Fujita might have gone…’
I curse him and I curse him and I curse him …
‘If you want to know, then you go and ask Senju.’
‘But Senju Akira’s not my friend, he’s yours.’
I curse him and now I curse myself…
‘But why would Senju know anything?’
‘You’re right,’ smiles Adachi. ‘Senju might know nothing, but he’ll know a lot more after he’s finished reading the letter…’
I curse and I curse and I curse and I curse …
‘What letter?’ I ask. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The letter about Fujita,’ he smiles. ‘About you.’
I curse and I curse and I curse …
I stare at him. I ask him again, ‘What letter?’
‘Can’t you guess, Inspector Minami?’ laughs Adachi now. ‘The letter Hayashi Jo left in the drawer of his desk; the letter about Detective Fujita and Nodera Tomiji and their plot to kill Matsuda Giichi; the letter that states Hayashi told you about this plot…’
‘I’m a dead man then,’ I say. ‘It’s a death sentence.’
‘Who says you don’t always get what you want?’
‘Senju will kill me,’ I say. ‘I can’t go to him.’
‘Yes, you can,’ he says. ‘You’ll be fine.’
‘He’ll kill me and you know it.’
Adachi takes an envelope from his jacket pocket. Adachi holds it up and laughs, ‘Only if he was to actually read the letter…’
I want to kill him, here and now, in the upstairs corridor of the Meguro police station, stab him, again and again –
Blood on the blade …
Adachi pats my face. ‘Remember who your real friends are, corporal. And remember, I want Fujita!’
*
I should not have come back in here. I need a drink. I should not have sat down at this table. I need a cigarette. I should have gone straight to Senju. I need some pills. I should have gone back to Atago. I need to see Ishida. I should have gone to see my family. I need that file. I should have gone back to Yuki. I need some sleep. Anywhere but back in here, here sat at this table, here before Kodaira Yoshio –
Kodaira Yoshio leans across the table and smiles at me again and says, ‘Like I say, never heard of a Tominaga Noriko, soldier.’
‘But you knew Abe and you knew her friend Masaoka?’
‘Yes, I knew Masaoka and yes, I knew Abe Yoshiko.’
‘Tominaga Noriko was one of their group…’
He laughs. ‘There was no group, soldier.’
‘But they were all fūten together…’
Kodaira Yoshio sighs and stretches his arms high above his head and then he says, ‘It was just the two of them, soldier…’
‘There were four of them,’ I say. ‘A gang of them.’
‘Only time I ever saw groups of fūten was in China,’ he says. ‘But you’d know as much about them as I do, soldier…’
I should not have come. I should not have sat at this table –
I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember …
‘Back in Jinan,’ he laughs. ‘I once saw a man who looked a lot like you. But he was Kempei and his name wasn’t Minami.’
*
I itch and I itch. Kodaira country. I scratch and I scratch. Kodaira country. I walk and I walk. Kodaira country. I sweat and I sweat. From Meguro towards Shimbashi. Kodaira country. The route takes me close to the Takanawa police station. Kodaira country. Near to Shinagawa. Kodaira country. This is where the initial investigation into the murder of Abe Yoshiko was based. Kodaira country. The next police station, the one before Atago, is the Mita police station –
Kodaira country. Kodaira country. Kodaira country …
I change my direction. I change my course –
Kodaira country. Kodaira country …
I go up the steps and through the doors of the Mita police station. I show my TMPD identification at the front desk. I ask to see the duty sergeant; an old man and a suspicious man, suspicious of Headquarters and suspicious of me –
My country now, not his …
I tell him who I am, why I’m here and what I want –
‘You’re from Headquarters,’ he says. ‘So I’ve no choice but to give you his name. But I tell you this, though I no longer know his address, I wouldn’t give it to you even if I did because you lot ruined his life once and no doubt you’d do it again…’
‘Then just tell me his name,’ I say. ‘And I’m gone.’
The sergeant looks away as he spits, ‘Murota…’
I turn away now, itching and scratching, gari-gari, as I walk back through the doors, back down the steps and back outside –
I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I itch and I scratch –
It is dark now. It is late now. But I am near.
*
I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. My arms and my legs. I turn their shoes to face the door. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. My back and my front. I turn their shoes to face the door. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. My scalp and my groin. I turn their shoes to face the door. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. My nails blood, my hands blood –
Death is everywhere. Death is everywhere …
I take the scissors from her dresser. I see black lice. I take the cover off her mirror. I see brown lice. I begin to cut. I see yellow lice. I cut the longer hairs on my head. I see grey lice. I cut the longer hairs on my body. I see white lice. Then I take the razor from her dresser. I see black lice. I open up the blade. I see brown lice. I dip the blade in the bowl of water by her bed. I see yellow lice. I have no soap but still I shave. I see grey lice. I shave off my hair. I see white lice. The hair on my head. I see black lice. The hair on my body. I see brown lice. Hair by hair. I see yellow lice. Every last strand. I see grey lice. In my scalp. I see white lice. In my groin. I see black lice. The skin beneath is red. I see brown lice. The skin beneath is raw –
I see yellow lice, I see grey lice, I see white lice…
The razor in my hand, the blade dull now –
Death is everywhere. Death is everywhere …
Black lice. Black lice. Black lice –
Death follows us as we follow death …
Yuki is awake. Her eyes open –
But we’re already dead …
Tokyo, 87°, slightly cloudy
I turn their shoes to face the door. No Calmotin. No alcohol. No sleep. No dreams. No air. No breeze. I am out of luck. Everything is falling apart. I turn their shoes to face the door. No Calmotin. No alcohol. No sleep. No dreams. No air. No breeze. I am out of luck. Everything falling apart. I turn their shoes to face the door, three times I turn their shoes to face the door. No Calmotin. No alcohol. No sleep. No dreams. No air. No breeze. No luck. Everything falling apart again, over and over and over, again and again and again –
She is beside me now, beside me now, beside me now …
I cannot keep my eyes open but, when I close my eyes, I cannot sleep. I cannot sleep. I cannot sleep. I cannot sleep because I cannot stop thinking about her. I think about her all the time –
She is beside me now. She is beside me now …
I think about her all the time –
She is lying beside me now …
Her head slightly to the right. In a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress. Her right arm outstretched. In a white half-sleeved chemise. Her left arm at her side. In dyed-pink socks. Her legs parted, raised and bent at the knee. In white canvas shoes with red rubber soles. My come drying on her stomach and on her ribs. In white canvas shoes with red rubber soles. She brings her left hand up to her stomach. In dyed-pink socks. She dips her fingers in my come. In a white half-sleeved chemise. She puts her fingers to her lips. In a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress. She licks my come from her fingers. In that yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress …
She is beside me now, beside me now, beside me now –
I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember …
I smash my fist into her three-panelled vanity mirror –
But here, in the half-light, I can’t forget…
I shout into her mirror, again and again –
No one is who they say they are …
‘Who are you? Who are you?’
*
Through the doors of the borrowed police station. Ishida. I have a shaved head. Ishida. Up the stairs of the borrowed police station. Ishida. I have a bandaged hand. Ishida. To the borrowed second-floor room where Hattori, Takeda, Sanada, Shimoda, Nishi and Kimura have him; Ishida with a black eye, a bloody mouth and handcuffed wrists. Ishida. Ishida looking at the floor, staring at his boots –
‘What’s going on? What have you done to him?’
‘You told us to keep him here,’ says Hattori.
‘I didn’t tell you to beat and handcuff him.’
‘We had no choice, did we?’ says Hattori.
‘What do you mean, you had no choice?’
‘He was going to run,’ says Takeda.
‘Just like Fujita,’ says Hattori –
Fujita. Fujita. Fujita…
I wipe my face. I wipe my neck. I walk over to Ishida. I raise his face from the floor. I ask him, ‘Where have you been, detective?’
Ishida sucks the air in between his teeth but does not answer –
‘We think he went to see Detective Fujita,’ says Takeda –
‘We reckon he knows where Fujita is,’ agrees Sanada –
‘And knows why Fujita has gone,’ hisses Hattori –
‘But he won’t tell us anything,’ says Shimoda –
‘So I say we should turn him over to Chief Inspector Adachi,’ says Hattori now. ‘He’d soon make him talk…’
‘Why turn him over to Chief Inspector Adachi?’ I ask him. ‘What would Chief Inspector Adachi want with Ishida?’
‘The Chief Inspector was here looking for him,’ says Hattori. ‘Looking for Ishida, asking about Detective Fujita —’
I curse him and I curse him and I curse him …
‘When was Chief Inspector Adachi here?’
‘Yesterday evening,’ says Hattori. ‘When you weren’t.’
I curse him and I curse myself…
They are mumbling now. They are muttering now –
I am the head of the room! I am the boss …
‘Enough!’ I shout. ‘I want your reports now!’
They stop mumbling. They stop muttering –
Eyes full of dissent and eyes full of hate …
And they make their reports about Tominaga Noriko’s landlady. And they make their reports about Masaoka Hisae –
‘But there was one other thing,’ says Detective Sanada. ‘Masaoka told us that Kodaira Yoshio always had gifts on him…’
‘You mean like food,’ I ask him. ‘Like kaidashi?’
‘As well as food,’ says Detective Sanada. ‘Proper gifts for ladies like jewellery, watches, umbrellas, you know…?’
‘Thank you, detective,’ I say. ‘Now I want you all back out on the streets today, back round Shiba and back round the park, back with the descriptions of Tominaga Noriko and Kodaira Yoshio…’
Investigation is footwork. Investigation is footwork …
‘What about Ishida here?’ asks Detective Hattori.
‘Leave him to me,’ I say. ‘You just get to work.’
But Hattori doesn’t move. ‘What about Fujita?’
‘Get to work, detective!’ I shout –
But, for just one moment, Hattori still doesn’t move. None of them move; Hattori, Takeda, Sanada, Shimoda, Nishi or Kimura; their eyes full of questions and doubts, full of dissent and hate –
Lead your men! Lead your men! Lead your men!
Now Hattori moves and then they all move –
I am the boss! I am the boss! I am the boss!
‘Detective Nishi, you wait here,’ I say –
Detective Nishi nods. Nishi waits –
‘Detective Takeda! Detective Kimura!’ I shout after them. ‘What time will Tominaga’s landlady be at Keiō Hospital?’
‘I said I’d take her,’ says Takeda. ‘An hour ago.’
I am the boss! I am the boss! I am the boss!
‘What are you standing around here for then?’ I shout at him. ‘You two go and pick her up and meet me up at Keiō with her…’
They are mumbling as they leave, muttering again.
Lead your men! Lead your men! Lead your men!
I turn to Detective Nishi. I take Detective Nishi off to one side. I ask him, ‘Did you hear back from the Kanuma police?’
Detective Nishi nods. Detective Nishi takes a piece of paper from his jacket. Detective Nishi hands it to me –
‘Good work, detective,’ I tell him.
Nishi bows. Nishi thanks me –
I am the boss! I am the boss!
Nishi says it was nothing –
I am the boss! The boss!
I shake my head and I thank him. Now I write down a name on a piece of paper for him and tell him, ‘Get me an address for this man and then meet me at Keiō with it as soon as you can…’
Nishi nods again. Nishi bows. Now Nishi leaves –
He leaves me alone with Detective Ishida.
*
My skin is red. Ishida on his knees. My skin is raw. Where is the file? My hand aches. What file? My body sweats. The Miyazaki Mitsuko file. The city stinks of shit. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Of shit and dirt and dust. The Miyazaki Mitsuko file. The dirt and the dust that coats my clothes and coats my skin. I’ve never heard of it. That scars my nostrils and burns my throat. Liar! Liar! Liar! With every passing jeep and with every passing truck. No, no, no. I take out my handkerchief. The file Fujita asked you to sign out. I take off my hat. No, no, no. I wipe my face. The file you signed out under Nishi’s name. I wipe my neck. I didn’t. I stare up at the bleached-white sky. The file you were to give to Fujita. The clouds of typhus. No, no, no. The clouds of dust. The Miyazaki Mitsuko file. The clouds of dirt. I don’t know what file you mean. The clouds of shit. The Miyazaki Mitsuko file! My skin is red. I don’t know what you’re talking about. My skin is raw. Tell me where it is! My hand aches. I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. My body sweats. I’m sorry, then. The city stinks of shit. But I really don’t know. The city stinks of defeat. Because you’re on your own now. This city on its knees –
And I curse him. I curse Fujita. I curse Adachi. I curse Hattori. I curse Takeda. I curse Sanada. I curse Shimoda. I curse Nishi. I curse Kimura. I curse Kai. I curse Kanehara. I curse Kita. I curse them all but most of all, I curse myself, I curse myself, I curse myself –
‘Get off your knees!’ I shout. ‘Get off your knees!’
*
The air is still thick with screams and sobs. I hate hospitals. I try not to breathe in. I don’t want to remember. The gurneys still lined up against the walls. I hate hospitals. I try not to stare. I don’t want to remember. Through the waiting rooms, down the long corridors to the service elevator. I hate hospitals. I watch the elevator doors close. I don’t want to remember. I ride the dark elevator down. I hate hospitals. I watch the elevator doors open. I don’t want to remember. I watch them open again onto the light. In the half-light. I watch them open onto Dr. Nakadate; blood on his gown, blood on his mask and blood on his gloves. I can’t forget. Nakadate waiting for me. ‘You’ve not spoken to Chief Kita, have you? About Miyazaki Mitsuko?’
‘I’m sorry,’ I tell him. ‘But the file is missing…’
‘So what? You could still go to Chief Kita.’
‘Please give me a few more days…’
‘A few more days? Why?’
Just a few more days …
‘Please doctor, I need to find the file. I need to read it…’
‘Why?’ asks Nakadate. ‘We all know what it must say.’
‘But I wasn’t even the senior officer,’ I say. ‘I need to find the file. I need to read it. And I need to speak to him…’
‘And you think he’d do the same for you?’
‘I really don’t know any more.’
‘A few more days,’ says Nakadate now. ‘But then I’ll go to Chief Kita myself, inspector…’
‘Thank you.’
‘And you really need to get that hand dressed too…’
‘Thank you,’ I say again. ‘I know I do.’
‘Then what are you waiting for?’
Not you. Not you. Not you …
I bow to the doctor. I thank the doctor. I turn and I walk away. Down the basement corridor. Past the walls of sinks and drains. Past the warnings and the signs. Past Detective Takeda and Detective Kimura now sat waiting in the corridor with Tominaga Noriko’s landlady. Down to the glass doors. Into the autopsy room –
The clothing has already been laid out on one of the autopsy tables, the two white canvas shoes with their red rubber soles placed at its foot, and the ladies’ undergarments found near the scene placed again on one of the smaller separate dissecting tables –
I wipe my face. I wipe my neck. I step back out into the corridor. I ask Tominaga Noriko’s landlady to please step into the autopsy room. Tominaga Noriko’s landlady follows me back inside. Now the landlady glances up at the autopsy table –
She is here. She is here. She is here …
The landlady collapses into tears –
She is here. She is here …
The landlady nods –
She is here …
‘Yes,’ whispers Tominaga Noriko’s landlady and I turn, then I walk and now I run back down the corridor, past the walls of sinks and drains, past the warnings and the signs, into the elevator and into the dark, into the dark then back out into the light, out into the light –
Nishi waiting for me. Nishi with an address.
*
My skin is not red. Nishi can’t wait to ask. My skin is not raw. What happened? My hand does not ache. She identified the clothes. My body does not sweat. The yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress? The city smells of flowers. Yes. Of flowers and blossom and perfume. The white half-sleeved chemise? The blossom and the perfume that coats my clothes and coats my skin. Yes. That tickles my nostrils and that caresses my throat. The dyed-pink socks? With every disappearing jeep and with every disappearing truck. Yes. I take out my handkerchief. The white canvas shoes with red rubber soles? I take off my hat. Yes, yes, yes. I wipe my face. She identified all the clothing as belonging to Tominaga Noriko? I wipe my neck. Yes. I stare up at the hint of blue in the sky. Really? The breeze in the air. Yes. The perfume on the breeze. Then our body has a name? The blossoms on the breeze. Yes. The flowers on the breeze. Our body is Tominaga Noriko? My skin is not red. Yes. My skin is not raw. And her killer is Kodaira Yoshio? My hand does not ache. Yes. My body does not sweat. And you think he will confess? The city smells of flowers. Yes. The city smells of garlands. And then the case is closed? The city smells of victory. Yes. My victory! My victory! My victory!
Not his victory. Not Fujita’s victory. Not Adachi’s victory. Not Kai’s victory. Not Kanehara’s victory. Not Kita’s victory –
‘This is my victory!’ I shout. ‘Mine! Mine! Mine!’
*
Murota Hideki is originally from Yamanashi Prefecture. But after he was fired from the police for his inappropriate behaviour, after he was left without a job, Murota Hideki did not go back to his family’s home in Yamanashi. Murota Hideki stayed on in Tokyo. And so Murota Hideki still lives in an old wooden row house in Kitazawa, not far from the Shimo-Kitazawa station, the same old wooden row house that Detective Nishi found listed as his address in his personal records, the same old wooden row house before us now –
The knock, the bow and the introductions …
Murota Hideki comes to his doorway in his underwear. Murota Hideki is red faced. Murota Hideki looks at my identification. Murota Hideki is sweating heavily. Murota Hideki wipes his thick neck with a grey towel. Murota Hideki looks up into my eyes –
Eyes he has met somewhere before …
Murota Hideki stinks of alcohol. Murota Hideki knows he has no choice. Murota Hideki listens to what I have to say. Then Murota Hideki looks at Nishi and then back at me and now he says, ‘I know I’ve no choice, but only one of you is coming inside.’
The spit and then the curse …
Murota Hideki turns back inside his house. Murota Hideki pads back across his old worn tatami. Murota Hideki sits back down at his low wooden table to wait for me –
In another shabby room …
For me to close the door on Nishi. To follow him inside his house. To pad across his tatami. To sit down at his table. To watch him pour himself another drink from the tall glass jug on the table –
Murota Hideki stirs the pale white mixture with a chopstick. Murota Hideki raises his glass. Murota Hideki takes a long drink. Now Murota Hideki asks, ‘Come on, what do you want this time?’
‘I want to talk to you about Abe Yoshiko,’ I tell him –
‘Not again,’ he groans. ‘What more is there to say?’
‘Only you know that,’ I say. ‘Is there any more?’
‘I fucked her just the once but I did not kill her,’ he says. ‘That’s all I know. I fucked her but I did not kill her…’
‘I know,’ I tell him. ‘We caught her killer.’
Now Murota Hideki looks up. ‘Really?’
‘You heard about the two bodies we found in Shiba Park last week? Well, one of the bodies was identified as a seventeen-year-old girl named Midorikawa Ryuko. Her family told us she was going to meet a man called Kodaira Yoshio on the day she went missing –
‘We pulled this Kodaira in and now he’s coughed…
‘The Midorikawa girl had been raped and strangled and so now we’re looking into any similar unsolved cases…’
‘Abe Yoshiko,’ says Murota Hideki –
‘I fucked her but I did not kill her …’
‘It’s the first case we’ve reopened,’ I tell him. ‘And we’ve already been back through the statements, back to the witnesses and one of Abe’s friends, a girl called Masaoka Hisae, she recognized this Kodaira and told us Abe knew him…’
‘How did she know him?’
In another shabby room …
‘The suspect Kodaira works in the laundry of a Shinchū Gun barracks in Shinagawa. As you know, Abe was part of a fūten group and they did their business with Americans at the same barracks. But not only Yankees; Kodaira would take them to a room he had there where they’d fuck him for food.’
‘As you know …’
‘And this Kodaira has confessed to killing Abe?’ asks Murota.
‘Yes,’ I nod. ‘When he was presented with this girl Masaoka’s statement, Kodaira confessed to killing Abe Yoshiko…’
‘What exactly did he say?’ asks Murota. ‘I want to know everything he said. I want to hear Kodaira’s confession.’
‘Everything he said… everything he said…’
‘Why?’ I ask him. ‘What difference does it make to you?’
‘What difference does it make to me?’ he laughs. ‘I only lost my job because of her, because of him, because he murdered her.’
‘Because of him … because of her …’
I put up my hand to stop him. I nod. I take out my notebook. I flick through the pages of coarse paper. The pencil marks. And I say, ‘It’s not verbatim, but Kodaira confessed that on the ninth of June this year, he met Abe Yoshiko who had been coming to the barracks regularly for zanpan. That day, Kodaira felt a strong sexual urge and so he told Abe that if she came with him, he knew where he could get her some bread. Kodaira says he then took her to the scrapyard of the Shiba Transport Company, about two hundred metres from the barracks. Kodaira gave her some bread and then asked her to have sex with him. Abe refused and tried to run away. Kodaira caught her and throttled her. Kodaira then strangled her with her own neckerchief and fled. So far he has denied raping Abe and denied hiding the body under the burnt-out truck where it was found…’
‘I fucked her but I did not kill her … I fucked her …’
Murota Hideki nods. Murota Hideki thanks me. Murota Hideki drains his glass. Murota Hideki pours himself another drink. Murota Hideki begins to stir it and stir it and stir it and stir it –
‘I fucked her … I fucked her … I fucked her …’
‘There were other girls in the fūten group,’ I tell him.
Murota Hideki continues to stir his pale drink –
‘One of them was called Tominaga Noriko…’
Murota Hideki stops stirring his drink –
‘We have reason to believe that she might well be the second unidentified body we found in Shiba Park on the same day that the body of Midorikawa Ryuko was discovered…’
Murota Hideki begins to stir his drink again. ‘And what reason is that, then, detective?’
‘The second body found at Shiba was approximately the same age and height as Tominaga. The autopsy of the second body found at Shiba puts the time of death as sometime between the twentieth and the twenty-seventh of July. Tominaga went missing sometime between the ninth and the fifteenth of July. The second body was clothed in a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress, a white half-sleeved chemise, dyed-pink socks and white canvas shoes with red rubber soles. Earlier this morning, Tominaga Noriko’s former landlady identified these clothes as having belonged to Tominaga –
I think about her all the time, I think about her all the time …
‘Tominaga Noriko knew Abe Yoshiko; Abe Yoshiko was murdered by Kodaira Yoshio; Kodaira Yoshio also murdered Midorikawa Ryuko; according to the autopsy reports on both bodies, Midorikawa Ryuko and the second body found at Shiba Park were both murdered by the same man; that man is Kodaira Yoshio —’
‘Never heard of a Tominaga Noriko, soldier …’
‘I believe the second body is that of Tominaga Noriko and that Kodaira Yoshio was her killer…’
Murota Hideki drains his glass. Murota Hideki claps his hands. ‘So what do you need me for, then?’
‘You knew Abe Yoshiko,’ I tell him. ‘So you might also have known Tominaga Noriko and might then be able to assist us…’
Murota Hideki shakes his head. Murota Hideki says, ‘No.’
‘No, you didn’t know her or no, you won’t assist us?’
Murota Hideki pours himself another drink. ‘Both.’
‘You knew Masaoka, another of Abe’s friends?’
Murota Hideki shakes his head again. ‘No.’
‘You’ve admitted you were fucking Abe,’ I tell him. ‘All I’m asking is if you knew any of the other girls in the same group…’
‘He wasn’t fucking Abe Yoshiko,’ says a woman’s voice from out of the shadows, from out of the shadows behind the shabby curtain, behind the shabby curtain that partitions this shabby room –
Another shabby curtain in another shabby room …
Murota Hideki is on his feet. ‘Shut up! Idiot! Shut up! Idiot!’
‘He was fucking me,’ says the woman, who now steps from out of the shadows and through the shabby curtain, from out of the shadows dressed in a yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress –
In another shabby yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore …
Murota Hideki grabbing hold of her bare thin white arms. Murota Hideki pushing her back through the curtain. Murota Hideki shouting, ‘No! No! Shut up! You don’t know what you’re doing!’
Back through the curtain. Back into the shadows –
He is pleading with her now. He is begging her –
‘Please shut up! Please, please shut up…’
Behind the curtain, in the shadows …
‘But I won’t pretend to be dead,’ she says. ‘I’m not a ghost.’
Murota whispering, ‘But they’ll come for you again…’
I stand up. I walk over to the curtain. ‘Listen to me…’
I can hear Murota groaning, cursing and sobbing –
‘I won’t say anything to anyone,’ I tell them –
Now Murota Hideki pushes the woman out of the shadows, through the curtains and says, ‘Here you are, then, detective. Here —’
He pushes her chin and her face up, up towards the light –
Her chin and her face squeezed between his fingers –
‘This is Tominaga Noriko,’ hisses Murota Hideki. ‘Are you satisfied now, detective? Are you happy now? Are you…?’
I shake my head. I say nothing. I wait for him –
For him to let go of her face and her chin –
For him to sit down. To pull her down –
To pour himself another drink –
For her to look up at me –
Tominaga Noriko …
‘It was never Abe Yoshiko,’ whispers Murota Hideki now. ‘It was always her, always Noriko, but it was always a secret and it always would have been had my luck not run out. But then again, my luck had already begun to run out before I even met Noriko…’
‘It was always a secret … It was always a secret …’
‘I suppose it’s funny, really, in a way, I survived the whole of the war and then, on the very morning of the surrender, the very last day of the whole of the war, my luck finally ran out…’
‘My luck finally ran out… finally ran out…’
‘Towards the end of the war, that very month in fact, I had been transferred to the Shinagawa police station and so that was where I was working when, early that morning of the fifteenth of August last year, some boiler-man comes in saying he’s discovered the naked body of a woman in an air-raid shelter…’
Miyazaki Mitsuko. Miyazaki Mitsuko …
‘And so that was my first piece of bad luck, being at Shinagawa that morning when this man comes in, because now I and an Officer Uchida are sent up there to get the details and to wait for your mob to arrive from Headquarters…’
I have seen this man before …
‘But it turns out the air-raid shelter is on naval property and so the case belongs to the Kempeitai. It’s not your business. Not our business. The Kempeitai take the case…’
Eyes I have met before …
‘Me and Officer Uchida were sent back down to Shinagawa police station to request an ambulance and that was that. Finished. Never heard anything more about it and never expected to. Case closed, as far as I was concerned…’
Now Murota Hideki points at Tominaga Noriko and says, ‘Then I met her this last winter, on my beat. She’s got no one and she’s got nothing. I feel sorry for her and yes, I fancy her. I find her a place in Ōimachi. I give her money and I give her food –
‘I take care of her and yes, I sleep with her…’
Murota Hideki looks over at Tominaga Noriko now and says, ‘We both had nothing and now we have something.’
She haunts me here. She haunts me now …
Now Murota Hideki shakes his head. Murota Hideki sighs, ‘But then two months ago, when this friend of hers, this Abe Yoshiko, was murdered, and in a similar manner and in a similar place to that body in Shinagawa last year, that was when I made my first mistake and that was when my luck finally ran out for good…’
‘My luck finally ran out for good … finally…’
‘I tried to be a policeman. I tried to help. I was at the Mita police station by then but I went across to Takanawa, where the Abe team was based, and I asked to see the officer in charge…’
‘Who is unfortunately no longer with us …’
‘I met this officer, man called Chief Inspector Mori, and I told him about the body in the air-raid shelter at Shinagawa. Chief Inspector Mori thanked me and, again, I thought that was that. I’d done what I could. I’d tried to help. Finished. And I never expected to hear anything more about it. Case closed again for me…’
Case closed … case closed … case closed …
‘But then, the very next day, this Chief Inspector Mori is down at the Mita police station, to question me …’
I don’t want to remember …
‘Can I remember any further details? Can I remember who was working with me at Shinagawa on that day? Can I remember the two detectives who were sent out from Headquarters? Can I remember the names of the officers from the Kempeitai? The witnesses? And so on and so on and so on…’
But in the half-light …
‘All I can tell him though is what I told him the day before, same as I just told you, but that’s when I should have known, that’s when I should have guessed…’
I can’t forget…
‘Because no sooner is Mori gone than some other Metro detective is down at Mita to see me, hauling me back up to HQ, telling me I’ve been a bad cop, that he’s heard all about me, screwing pan-pan girls on my beat, like I’m the only cop in the city who’s ever had a whore on his beat, like he hasn’t got better things to do than chase after me, but he’s relentless, this detective, he never gives up, asking me to confess to this, to confess to that, asking me for the name of my girl, for Noriko’s name, and now I get the picture –
‘He is here to punish me. He is here to warn me –
‘And I don’t know why I ever thought it would work, or why I ever thought it was a good idea, but there’s no way I’m ever going to give him Noriko’s name, so I tell him I was seeing Abe, that I fucked her but I never killed her, and guess what…?
‘He bought it, believed it was Abe –
‘And so they fired me –
‘For conduct unbecoming a police officer, but I didn’t care because they didn’t know about Noriko and that meant she was safe. Safe. Ten days later, I read that this Chief Inspector Mori has been purged by the SCAP and gone insane. Mad. Then I knew I’d made the right decision, knew I’d made the right choice…’
The Matsuzawa Hospital for the Insane …
‘Until today. Until you turned up…’
‘My luck finally ran out…’
‘I knew we should have run, we should have gone as far away as we could from here …,’ and now Murota Hideki’s words trail off, trail off back into the shadows, back into the shadows behind the shabby curtain, behind the shabby curtain that partitions this shabby room, the shadows from the light and the light from the shadows –
The voices from the echoes and the truth from the lies …
This shabby curtain, this shabby country –
‘Are you satisfied now, detective?’ asks Murota Hideki. ‘Are you happy now? Have you heard and seen enough now? Heard enough about me and seen enough of her, have you now, officer?’
‘No,’ I tell him. ‘I want the name of the detective.’
‘Why do you want that?’ he laughs. ‘What for?’
‘Tell me his name,’ I say. ‘And then I’m gone.’
Murota spits, ‘Said his name was Adachi…’
‘Are you satisfied now, detective?’
‘For what that’s worth,’ laughs Murota now. ‘Because no one is ever who they say they are…’
Here in the half-light …
‘Not these days…’
I have nothing more to ask them. My skin is red. Nothing more to say to them. My skin is raw. I pick up my hat. My hand aches. I get up from their low table in their shabby room. My body sweats. In this shabby house, in this shabby city, in this shabby country –
In this place of defeat. In this place of capitulation …
‘You be careful out there, detective,’ Murota Hideki tells me. ‘And you remember my face and remember what happened to me. And remember the name of Chief Inspector Mori and you remember what happened to him. You remember us both now, detective…’
This place of surrender. This place of occupation …
‘I’ll remember you,’ I say. I turn to Tominaga –
In this place of ghosts, this place of ghosts …
I turn to Tominaga Noriko and I say, ‘Thank you, miss.’
And she thanks me back and then she bows her head –
In her yellow and dark-blue striped pinafore dress …
‘And you remember this as well then,’ says Murota Hideki. ‘If you ever tell anyone about her, you ever tell anyone where she is, that she’s here with me, then I will find you and I will kill you…’
In this place of death. In this place of silence …
I turn back to Murota. I bow to him –
In this place of no resistance.
*
My skin is red. Nishi can’t wait. My skin is raw. Nishi wants to know what happened. My hand aches. I say nothing. My body sweats. What did Murota say? The city stinks of shit. I say nothing. Of shit and dirt and dust. Did he know Tominaga Noriko? The dirt and the dust that coats my clothes and coats my skin. I say nothing. That scratches my nostrils and burns my throat. Did he remember her? With every passing jeep and with every passing truck. Nothing, nothing, nothing. I take out my handkerchief. It isn’t her, is it? I take off my hat. No. I wipe my face. The body in the park? I wipe my neck. I’m sorry. I stare up at the bleached-white sky. It isn’t Tominaga Noriko, is it? The clouds of typhus. I’m sorry. The clouds of dust. The case isn’t closed, is it? The clouds of dirt. I’m sorry. The clouds of shit. This isn’t victory, is it? My skin is red. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. My skin is raw. This is defeat again. My hand aches. Yes. My body sweats. We haven’t won. The city stinks of shit. No. The city stinks of defeat. We have lost again. This city on its knees. Yes. Nishi on his knees. We always lose. Always, always lose …
‘No! No! No!’ I shout. ‘Get off your knees!’
*
I walk up the stairs to Police Arcade. To the smells and the stains. Chief Inspector Adachi is standing in the corridor. There is no escape. Chief Inspector Adachi is looking for me. We should turn him over to Chief Inspector Adachi. Chief Inspector Adachi is waiting for me. The Chief Inspector was here looking for him. Chief Inspector Adachi walks me to the end of the corridor. Looking for Ishida, asking about Detective Fujita. Chief Inspector Adachi pulls me into the bathroom. Said his name was Adachi. Chief Inspector Adachi pushes me into a cubicle. No escape from the smells and the stains …
Chief Inspector Adachi puts me up against the wall –
The smells of ammonia and the stains of shit …
Chief Inspector Adachi stares into my face and then he says, ‘You haven’t been to see Senju yet, have you, detective?’
The smells of amnesia, the stains of blood …
‘You’ve been following me, sir?’
The stains on his hands …
‘I’m not the only one.’
The stains on mine …
‘Then you’ll know I’ve been busy,’ I tell him. ‘Busy searching for the Miyazaki Mitsuko file, chief inspector, sir.’
Now he takes his hands off me. Now he steps back. Now he asks, ‘And which Miyazaki Mitsuko file would that be?’
‘The Tokyo MPD file on the murder of Miyazaki Mitsuko. The file that was signed out just four days ago —’
‘Signed out by whom?’ asks Adachi –
‘Detective Nishi,’ I say. ‘But he denies it and I believe him.’
‘So who do you believe signed it out, detective?’
‘I think Fujita got Ishida to sign it out under Nishi’s name.’
‘Why?’ asks Adachi, but Adachi already knows –
‘Insurance,’ I say. ‘Extortion. Blackmail…’
‘Blackmail?’ he asks, but he knows –
‘You.’
‘And what about you, corporal? Mine won’t be the only name in that file, will it?’
‘I don’t know,’ I tell him. ‘I haven’t read it, have I?’
‘But I wasn’t even the senior officer,’ I say. ‘I need to find the file. I need to read it. And I need to speak to him…’
‘Then go to Senju and go soon,’ hisses Adachi. ‘Ask him where Fujita is. If Senju says he doesn’t know, you tell him about Fujita and Nodera Tomiji. You tell him about the plot.’
‘And you think he’d do the same for you?’
‘But then Senju will rip Tokyo apart looking for Fujita,’ I say. ‘He’ll find him and he’ll kill him before we…’
‘I really don’t know any more.’
‘Exactly,’ smiles Adachi.
*
Adachi and Kanehara are sat on his right, Kai and I on his left, the chief telling us, ‘As you all know, we had a quick success yesterday in attaining Kodaira Yoshio’s confession to the murder of Abe Yoshiko. And I think we should all thank Chief Inspector Kanehara for his legwork and Chief Inspector Adachi for his interrogation…’
Inspector Kai and I nodding our heads –
‘As we said, there are similarities with other cases and, after this early success with the Abe case, I feel there is every reason to go ahead and wash these other cases, manpower permitting. And so Inspector Kai, I believe you have the next one…’
Inspector Kai stands up now. Kai nods. ‘Shinokawa Tatsue; seventeen years old; raped and strangled…
‘Her body was found on the sixteenth of January this year in the basement of the annex of the former Toyoko Department Store at 20 Namiki-chō, Shibuya Ward, next to Shibuya station This basement formerly housed the employee canteen of the Toyoko Department Store but, since it was badly damaged during the air raids, it is now used only for storage…
‘On the sixteenth of January this year, a guard checking the storage area in the basement, removed some shelves and found the body of Shinokawa…
‘The body was in a state of some decay and the autopsy, which was conducted by Dr. Nakadate at the Keiō University Hospital, concluded that Shinokawa had probably died between the last week of October and the first week of November last year. However, the autopsy also revealed that Shinokawa Tatsue had most probably been raped before being strangled to death…’
‘Probably?’ asks Chief Inspector Adachi. ‘Why probably?’
Kai says, ‘Presumably because of the state of the body.’
‘Where was the investigation headquarters?’
Kai says, ‘The Shibuya precinct station.’
‘And who was in charge?’
Kai says, ‘Mori.’
‘Chief Inspector Mori,’ says Chief Kita. ‘Former Chief Inspector Mori was in charge.’
Kai blushes now. Kai bows. ‘Former Chief Inspector Mori.’
‘But that’s strange, don’t you think?’ asks Adachi. ‘I’ve read the entirety of the Abe Yoshiko case file, every single scrap of paperwork, and former Chief Inspector Mori never once mentions the Shinokawa case in his notes on the Abe case, never once…’
Inspector Kai shakes his head. Kai says, ‘No.’
‘And yet, both victims were of a similar age,’ continues Adachi. ‘Both had been raped and strangled. Both were his cases…’
‘But let us not forget the particular and peculiar circumstances of our times, Chief Inspector Adachi,’ interrupts Chief Kita. ‘Former Chief Inspector Mori was a very competent and a very diligent police officer but, and as you are well aware, there has been a marked rise in crimes and lawlessness in Tokyo over the past year and, equally, there has been a marked fall in the number of police officers and the resources and equipment available to us –
‘Now Chief Inspector Mori and I discussed this particular case at length and we both felt that, because of the state of the body, because of the shortage of manpower, the shortage of resources, our efforts were better directed towards other cases…
‘And so, ultimately, it was my decision to roll the banner back up again and close this case.’
Chief Inspector Adachi has his head bowed. Inspector Adachi does not look up. Adachi says, ‘I am sorry. Please excuse my rudeness and my presumption. I am sorry. It was not my intention to cast aspersions or make insinuations about the competence of Chief Inspector Mori. We all worked with him and we all learned from him. We all valued him and we all miss him…’
‘Thank you, chief inspector,’ says Chief Kita. ‘Inspector Kai, is there anything else you would like to add about the case?’
Inspector Kai closes his mouth. Kai nods. He says, ‘Her umbrella and twenty yen in cash were also reported missing.’
‘Kodaira Yoshio always had gifts on him … Proper gifts for ladies like jewellery, watches, umbrellas, you know …?’
‘Thank you, inspector,’ says the chief. ‘Right, as you all know, at the time of Shinokawa’s murder, Kodaira was living in Wakagi-chō in Shibuya Ward. And, as Chief Inspector Adachi stated, the age of the victim and the cause of death are the same as both those of Midorikawa Ryuko and Abe Yoshiko. So I want Inspector Kai and his Room to reopen this case, to reinterview the original witnesses from the original investigation as well as Kodaira’s wife and his immediate family living here in Tokyo…
‘Unfortunately, we will also have to make use of the Shibuya police station again as Inspector Kai will need officers from the Shibuya precinct to question local residents about Kodaira and Shinokawa. Hopefully a lead or a witness will quickly turn up that will again prompt Kodaira Yoshio to make another confession…’
More legwork. More questions. More reports …
‘Finally,’ says the chief. ‘Inspector Minami…’
There are things to say. Things not to say …
I wipe my neck. I stand up. I tell them about Kodaira Yoshio’s mistress, Okayama Hisayo. I tell them about the rumours of a murder in Kanuma in Tochigi Prefecture –
There are things to say …
‘Baba Hiroko, aged nineteen, found raped and strangled with her own scarf on the third of January this year, in Nishi Katamura, Tochigi. This fell in the jurisdiction of the Kanuma police, Tochigi. As you all know, Kodaira is originally from Nikkō in Tochigi Prefecture. His mistress, the widow Okayama Hisayo, has told us that Kodaira accompanied her on a visit to her mother’s house which is located one mountain away from Kanuma station. Okayama also told us that Kodaira has been back to the area on numerous occasions ostensibly for kaidashi and supplies and so on…
‘I think there is a strong possibility, given the age of the victim, the cause and circumstances of her death, the proximity to Kodaira Yoshio’s known haunts and the timeframe, that Kodaira should be questioned about this murder…’
There’s no applause here either …
I do not tell them about Tominaga Noriko’s landlady and the clothing. I do not tell them about visiting Murota Hideki. I do not tell them about seeing Tominaga Noriko –
Things not to say …
But Adachi is waiting for me. Adachi is always waiting –
‘But are you any nearer identifying the second Shiba body? What about this missing friend of Abe Yoshiko? What about the statement by her landlady? You said there was a possibility that the body might be this missing girl? This friend of Abe?’
But I told you nothing. I told you nothing…
‘I am very sorry,’ I tell him now. ‘But we no longer believe that to be the case, Chief Inspector Adachi, sir.’
‘Is that right?’ asks Adachi. ‘And yet only yesterday you seemed so very, very sure…’
‘And I’m very, very sorry,’ I tell him again. ‘And we are equally disappointed, sir.’
‘So are you now saying this friend of Abe is alive?’ he asks. ‘You’ve actually found her? Eliminated her?’
Tell him nothing …
‘No, sir,’ I lie. ‘I just mean that her landlady failed to identify the clothing as hers…’
Nothing …
‘So she is still missing, then? This friend of Abe Yoshiko?’
I nod. I say, ‘She may be missing, but she’s not our body.’
But Adachi doesn’t give up. Adachi never gives up …
‘And what about all the other girls?’ he asks me –
I shake my head. I ask, ‘What other girls?’
‘All the other girls aged fifteen to twenty years old reported missing in the past two months. These other girls that you have had your own men combing the streets of Tokyo for…’
I curse him. I curse him. I curse him …
‘The enquiries are still ongoing, sir.’
I curse him and I curse myself…
‘So are you then any nearer actually identifying the body?’
I meet his eyes now. I stare back at him. I say, ‘No.’
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no …
‘That’s enough,’ says Chief Kita –
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no …
Now the chief stands up –
It’s finished. It’s over …
And we all stand up and all bow and now all start to leave –
‘Chief Inspector Adachi,’ says the chief. ‘Please wait.’
Chief Inspector Adachi bows and sits back down.
‘And Inspector Minami, please wait outside.’
I bow my head. Then I step outside.
*
Thirty minutes later Chief Inspector Adachi steps out of Chief Kita’s office into the corridor. Chief Inspector Adachi stands in front of me and says, ‘The chief would like to see you now, Inspector Minami.’
I nod and I thank him. But I sit and I wait until he is gone –
Now I open the door. I step back inside the chief’s office –
The blood-flecked scroll on the wall behind his desk –
‘It is time to reveal the true essence of the nation …’
‘Please sit down,’ he says. ‘You look tired…’
I bow. I apologize. I thank him. I sit down –
Then he asks, ‘What happened at Keiō?’
‘The landlady believes that the clothes found on the body in Shiba Park are not the same as those worn by Tominaga Noriko.’
‘So you said,’ says the chief. ‘And so?’
I shake my head. ‘And that’s it.’
‘But you were convinced that this missing girl could be the body at Shiba Park,’ says the chief. ‘You know the landlady could be mistaken about the clothes. You must have found out more?’
I shake my head again. I say, ‘I’m sorry. No.’
‘You’ve nothing else to say, then?’
I say again, ‘I’m sorry. No.’
Things not to say …
‘So why were you down at Mita police station last night?’
I have no answer. I say nothing. There is nothing to say.
‘You went there to try to find the name of the officer who was dismissed over Abe, didn’t you, detective? Didn’t you?’
I bow my head now. I say, ‘I am sorry, sir.’
‘You went there even after I told you now was not the time, didn’t you, detective? You still went there, directly disobeying me.’
My head still bowed, I say again, ‘I’m sorry, sir.’
‘Did they tell you his name?’ asks the chief.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘They told me his name.’
‘Did they tell you his address?’
‘No, they did not.’
‘But you still found it out, didn’t you?’ asks the chief. ‘You still went to see Murota, didn’t you?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I…’
‘Did you ever stop to think why I said now was not the time to be asking about Murota? Did you, detective?’ the chief asks me –
My head still low, I apologize. I apologize and I apologize –
‘Did you ever stop to think I might have had a reason?’
I apologize and I apologize and again, I apologize –
‘Did you ever think of anyone but yourself in this?’
I apologize and I apologize again, over and over –
‘Do you ever think of anyone but yourself…?’
I say, ‘I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry…’
The chief leans forward now. The chief whispers, ‘You are being watched. You are being followed. Everywhere you go –
‘Did you know that? Did you even suspect that?’
My head still bowed, I say, ‘I had no idea…’
‘The Public Safety Division has been sniffing around again, seeking to draw up fresh lists of the guilty. There are rumours of a second Purge Directive, this time against lower ranking officers…
‘They are trying to match histories to names…
‘And yours is one of the names…’
I curse him and I curse myself…
I want to know what he knows. I curse him! I want to know what he has heard. I curse myself! I want to know how he knows what he knows. I curse him! I want to know who told him what he knows. I curse myself! But I don’t ask anything or say anything –
I just curse him and I curse myself…
Because there’s nothing to say –
No point. No point. No point –
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku …
No point. No point –
Chiku-taku …
I am out of time –
‘I don’t know if these are just shots in the dark,’ the chief is saying now. ‘Or if they have some actual information, some witnesses or statements but, either way, it is best you get lost…’
‘Best I get lost?’ I repeat. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I want you to go up to Tochigi,’ he says.
‘Tochigi Prefecture? When?’
‘Tomorrow,’ he says –
Now the chief picks up a file and passes it across his desk. ‘Yesterday we actually had a call from the Utsunomiya Chihō Kensatsu-chō, the Utsunomiya District Public Prosecutor’s Office, about two unsolved murders in their jurisdiction that they wanted to pass on to the Kodaira investigation team. One of the murders was your Baba Hiroko and the other was a Numao Shizue, aged sixteen, who was found stabbed on the thirtieth of December last year, in the jurisdiction of the Nikkō police. Baba Hiroko, as you know, was found strangled with her own scarf on the third of January in Nishi Katamura, in the jurisdiction of the Kanuma Police…
‘But Baba Hiroko was actually living here in Kyōbashi Ward so, before you go up to Tochigi tomorrow, I think it would be a good idea to first speak to her family in Tokyo…’
I say, ‘I want to take Nishi…’
‘No,’ says the chief.
‘Am I to go alone?’
‘Chief Inspector Adachi has recommended young Ishida…’
‘Excuse me,’ I say. ‘I don’t think he’s a suitable officer —’
‘This is not a debate,’ says the chief. ‘This is an order.’
I bow my head again. I apologize again, and again –
And then I ask, ‘How long should I stay away?’
‘Only for a couple of days,’ says the chief –
Now I ask, ‘And then what happens?’
The chief clears his throat. The chief stands behind his desk. Now the chief says, ‘Inspector Minami, as of midnight tonight, I am forced to relieve you of your command of Room #2…’
I am on my knees. I am on my knees …
‘There have been complaints about you…’
I am on my knees in his office …
‘Complaints from your own men…’
On my knees, on his floor …
‘Complaints about your lack of leadership,’ says the chief. ‘Your lack of organization. Complaints about your inability to command. Your inability to delegate. Complaints about the continued absence of Detective Fujita and about your own absences…’
On his floor. In his office. On my knees …
‘But you tell me to lead my men and then you send me away and you demote me. Who will lead my men now …? Who will take charge of this case …? Please give me a second chance…’
Begging him, pleading with him …
‘In the continued absence of Detective Fujita, I’m promoting Detective Hattori under the supervision of Chief Inspector Adachi.’
‘And what happens to me when I get back…?’
Pleading for a second chance …
‘Until this situation is clarified, you will be assigned to a local police station upon your return from Tochigi…’
‘And so what about my transfer…?’
Begging for a second chance …
‘There will be no transfer…’
No second chance.
*
There is no route back to Atago today. In the half-light. I walk down the stairs into the bar. They are following me. There are only two other customers at the counter; the same middle-aged woman, now dressed in brown, smelling of local perfume and smoking Golden Bat cigarettes; the same old man in his dark suit, taking out his pocket watch and winding it up and putting it away again, then taking it out and winding it up and putting it away again, then –
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku …
The woman opens her purse. The woman places chocolates on the bar. The woman says, ‘Please help yourself…’
But they taste bitter. They taste of ash –
The bakudan explodes in my belly –
The man shows me the watch –
It still says twelve o’clock –
But in the half-light –
His watch has no hands and we both have no feet.
*
Through the doors of the borrowed police station. I have a shaved head. Up the stairs of the borrowed police station. I have a bandaged hand. To the borrowed second-floor room. I have a pair of bloody knees. Hattori, Takeda, Sanada, Shimoda, Nishi, Kimura and Ishida. I have a broken heart. They are all here and they already know –
I am not the head of the room. I am not their boss …
Now they all look away. They all hide their eyes –
Their eyes full of questions. Eyes full of doubts …
Eyes full of whispers, rumours and complaints …
I have nothing to say to any one of them –
I hate them. I hate them. I hate them all…
I walk over to Takeda’s borrowed desk and I bow and I thank him for all his hard work and for all his help. I walk over to Sanada’s borrowed desk and I bow and I thank him for all his hard work and for all his help. I walk over to Shimoda’s desk and I bow and I thank him for all his hard work, for all his help –
I hate them all. I hate them all…
I stand before Nishi’s desk and I bow and I thank him for all his hard work and for all his help and I wish him luck. I turn to Kimura and I bow and I thank him for all his hard work and for all his help and I wish him luck. Then I bow and I thank Ishida for all his hard work and I wish him luck –
I will see him again …
I walk over to Detective Hattori’s desk and I bow low and I congratulate him on his promotion and I wish him luck in his promotion and with the investigation and I thank him for all his hard work and all his help –
I hate him…
Finally, I stand before them all and I bow deeply and I apologize to them for my lack of leadership, my lack of organization, my inability to command, my inability to delegate and my absences –
‘I am sorry,’ I say. ‘And I hope to earn your forgiveness.’
*
It is night now. They are following me. It is hot still. They are following me. I have places to visit, people to see before we leave for Tochigi tomorrow afternoon. They are following me. The sound of a balladeer and his guitar trails me up the hill as I walk away from Shibuya station. They are following me. I don’t recognize the words of the song, I don’t recognize the music. They are following me. I stop at the mouth of the dark alley. They are following me. I glance back down the hill. They are following me. I sit down on a broken wall. They are following me. I take off my hat and I fan myself –
They are following me. They are still following me …
I put on my hat and I stand back up. I walk down the alley and I knock on the door. I slide it open and I make my apologies –
‘But I have some good news,’ I tell her –
Tominaga Noriko’s landlady looks up from another shabby low table in another shabby little room in another shabby little house in another shabby neighbourhood –
‘Noriko’s not dead.’
There are questions and doubts in her red eyes now, questions and doubts among the tears, the tears she has wept since she glanced up at the clothing lain out on that autopsy table –
‘The clothes were not hers,’ I tell her –
Hope among the questions now, hope among the doubts, hope that cries, ‘Really? So Noriko is still alive?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I saw her today.’
Hope that asks, ‘Is she coming back, then? Back here?’
‘I don’t know,’ I tell her. ‘But I don’t think so…’
No more questions, no more doubts and no more hope now, only rage and only grief that shouts and screams out –
‘Then she’s still dead to me, detective!’
*
The Shimbashi New Life Market is back in business. But among the kettles and the pans, the crockery and the utensils, among the clothes and the shoes, the cooking oil and the soy sauce, among the fruit and the vegetables, the sardines and the second-hand suits, the coffee and the silk, in their patterned shirts and their American sunglasses, Senju’s men are still licking their wounds, still counting their dead –
Sharpening old blades and swearing new oaths –
Exchanging sake cups with any old soldier –
‘Let’s all sing the Apple Song’
These are desperate times…
But defiant times –
‘Let them come in their hundreds,’ Senju Akira is telling me. ‘Let them come in their thousands. For I am assembling the largest organization of patriotic Japanese men this country has seen since the end of the war. Then let the Chinese, the Koreans and the Formosans try to take away what has been left us, the little that has been left us by the many that sacrificed themselves before us –
‘For I tell you this, in the centuries to come, generations of Japanese, generations who will be living only because of our stand, these generations will hear tales of the things we did to protect our fellow countrymen and save the Japanese nation and they will shed tears for us under the cherry blossoms and raise their glasses under the full moon and pray for our souls at Yasukuni, honouring us as the true keepers of the Japanese spirit…’
I have no time for this –
Chiku-taku …
I bow lower on the tatami. I say, ‘I am very sorry to trouble you at a time like this…’
‘I am always happy to see an old friend,’ says Senju now. ‘And I was worried about you, detective. I’d begun to think you might be avoiding me. I’d even begun to think that maybe we weren’t really friends, that maybe you only came to see me when you wanted something from me, when you wanted money or wanted drugs…’
‘I do need money,’ I tell him. ‘And I do need Calmotin.’
‘That’s very honest of you, detective,’ says Senju. ‘And also very refreshing in such duplicitous and deceitful times as these –
‘I admire your honesty, Inspector Minami…’
I bow. I thank him. I start to speak but –
‘But did you just come with a shopping list, detective?’
I bow again. I apologize again. I tell him, ‘It isn’t easy for me. There’s an investigation into the murder of Hayashi…’
‘You sound surprised?’ laughs Senju. ‘It’s your job, isn’t it?’
‘But it’s not my case,’ I tell him. ‘And there’s a problem…’
‘A problem for who?’ asks Senju. ‘For you or for me?’
‘For both of us,’ I tell him. ‘Fujita is missing…’
‘And why is this a problem for either of us?’
‘Do you know where he is?’ I ask him.
‘No,’ says Senju. ‘But I’ll ask you again, why would a missing Detective Fujita be my problem?’
‘He’s wanted for questioning about the death of Hayashi Jo,’ I say, and then I pause, I swallow, and now I say, ‘He’s wanted for questioning because Hayashi Jo left behind a letter, a last testament, in which he claims to have information putting Fujita in the New Oasis with Nodera Tomiji on the night of the hit on Matsuda…’
Senju has stopped listening. Senju is stood up now –
Senju showering me with money and with pills –
‘This is not a problem,’ Senju is shouting –
‘This is going to be a pleasure!’
*
It will be hours before I lie again here upon the old tatami mats of her dim and lamp-lit room. It will be hours before I stare again at her peeling screens with their ivy-leaf designs. Hours before I watch her draw again her figures with their fox-faces upon these screens –
I cannot stay tonight. I cannot take the Calmotin –
I do not want to close my eyes tonight –
For I have one last place still to go.
‘I wish it would rain,’ she says –
‘I cannot stay tonight,’ I tell her. ‘I won’t be here tomorrow. But, as soon as I return to Tokyo, I’ll come straight here…’
Now Yuki puts down her pencils and reaches for a piece of tissue paper. Now she covers both her eyebrows with the paper and stares at me in the panels of her mirror –
‘Does this become me?’
I leave her money –
I leave her pills.
Tokyo, 90°, fine
The Matsuzawa Hospital for the Insane is on the border between the Setagaya and Suginami wards, half-way between my own house in Mitaka and the house of Murota Hideki in Kitazawa. I thought you would have seen enough of that place. I know the Matsuzawa Hospital for the Insane well, but I’m not sure why I’m here today –
I thought you would have seen enough of that place…
The Matsuzawa Hospital was built during the reign of the Emperor Meiji and survived the fires and the famines of the last two years to still be standing in the reign of the Emperor MacArthur –
I hate hospitals. I hate all hospitals…
But its buildings are in disrepair and its grounds untended now, the gates long taken for the war effort and the trees cut down for winter fuel. Inside the reception, the paint on the walls has faded and the linoleum on the floor is worn, the staff anaesthetized –
But I hate this hospital the most…
‘Former Police Inspector Mori,’ I say again –
But the receptionist still shakes her head –
‘Please check for me,’ I ask her. ‘It is very important and he was only admitted last month. Mori Ichiro…’
The gaunt receptionist in the stained uniform does not speak but turns away and disappears now, disappears into the grubby office behind the grimy counter. I wait and I wait –
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku. Chiku…
The same sounds of screams and sobs as at Keiō Hospital, the same smells of DDT and disinfectant –
I hate this place. I hate…
‘Here it is,’ says the receptionist now with a file in her hand. ‘Mori Ichiro was admitted on the thirtieth of June this year.’
‘And is Mr. Mori still here?’ I ask her –
The receptionist nods. ‘Yes, he is.’
‘I’d like to see him then, please.’
The receptionist shakes her head now. The receptionist says, ‘But you know I can’t just let you —’
‘Then please tell me the name of Mr. Mori’s doctor,’ I say. ‘And tell me where I can find him.’
The receptionist looks down at the file and says, ‘Dr. Nomura. His office is on the second…’
‘I know,’ I tell her and I start to walk away, to walk away and then to run, to run down the corridor and up the stairs, up the stairs and along another corridor, along another corridor to bang on the door, to bang on the door to the office of Dr. Nomura, to bang on the door and then open it, open it and bow and say, ‘Excuse me…’
Dr. Nomura looks up from the papers on his desk –
‘Inspector?’ he says. ‘It’s been a while…’
‘And I am sorry to call on you unannounced,’ I say again. ‘But I am here on police business this time…’
‘Please sit down, then,’ says the doctor now. ‘And can I offer you a drink of cold tea, detective…?’
I wipe my face and I wipe my neck. I glance at my watch and I shake my head. I say, ‘Thank you but I haven’t much time, doctor.’
The doctor nods. ‘What is it I can do for you, detective?’
‘You have a patient I would like to see,’ I tell the doctor. ‘A former chief inspector of police called Mori. Mori Ichiro…’
The doctor nods again. The doctor says, ‘I know.’
‘Well, I’d very much like to see him,’ I tell the doctor again. ‘It is important I speak with him about an investigation.’
Now the doctor shakes his head. Now the doctor says, ‘I very much doubt that that will be possible, inspector…’
‘Why not?’ I ask him. ‘It’s important.’
‘I understand that,’ says the doctor. ‘But, unfortunately, Mr. Mori has not responded to any of our treatments or our regimens –
‘And so, for the moment, Mr. Mori does not speak…’
‘I would still like to see him,’ I tell the doctor.
The doctor shakes his head. The doctor says, ‘As you know better than most, detective, recovery from the kind of sudden mental collapse which former Chief Inspector Mori suffered on learning he was to be purged, such a sudden mental collapse takes a very, very long time to recover from, if at all, and any further shocks to the brain can cause irreparable damage to the patient…’
I bow. I nod. I say, ‘I know that.’
The blood-flecked scroll…
‘In the case of your father, for example,’ continues the doctor. ‘One sudden moment of lucidity, a moment of clarity, proved fatal.’
I don’t want to remember. I don’t want to remember…
I nod again. I say again, ‘May I see him but not speak?’
The blood-flecked scroll on the wall…
‘Yes,’ says the doctor. ‘Though I’m not sure why…’
In the half-light, I can’t forget…
‘He was a policeman,’ I tell him. ‘Like my father…’
The blood-flecked scroll on the wall behind his desk…
‘Like my father,’ I say again now. ‘And like me…’
I can’t forget. I can’t forget…
Dr. Nomura nods. Dr Nomura says, ‘Follow me —’ And so I follow Dr. Nomura out of his office, out of his office and down another long corridor, another long corridor through locked metal doors, through locked metal doors into the secure wards, into the secure wards and down more corridors, down more corridors to the secure rooms, the secure rooms and more locked metal doors –
Now Dr. Nomura stops before one locked metal door –
One locked metal door with a bolted metal hatch –
‘Here we are,’ says Nomura. ‘But just look…’
Nomura slides back the bolts on the hatch. Nomura lowers the metal hatch. Now Nomura steps back and says, ‘There you are…’
I step towards the door. I look through the hatchway –
I stare through the hatchway at the man inside –
The man inside, cross-legged on his cot –
I have seen this man before…
This man in a shapeless gown of yellow and dark-blue striped Chinese silk, with his close-shaven head and his unblinking eyes –
Eyes I have met before…
‘Have you seen enough now?’ asks Nomura –
I step away from the hatch now and I nod –
‘I have seen enough,’ I say. ‘Thank you, doctor.’ Nomura closes the hatch.
Nomura bolts it –
No one is who they say they are…
But I have seen this man before –
No one is who they seem…
This man is not former Chief Inspector Mori Ichiro.
*
I have haggled and I have bartered. Just to eat. I have threatened and I have bullied. Just to work. But I itch and I scratch again. Gari-gari. My hand aches and my body stinks. Of defeat. I wipe my face and I wipe my neck. And I curse. I have come to the end of my own street. Ton-ton. I walk down the street to my own house. Ton-ton. I open the gate to my own house. Ton-ton. I go up the path to my own house –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton…
There is a bonfire of bedding in my garden –
There is fire and there is smoke here.
I open the door to my own house –
I have come to say goodbye –
Their shoes face the door…
This time I cannot turn away. This time I cannot run away –
The rotting mats, the shredded doors, the fallen walls…
From the smell of the children. The smell of the pain.
I stand in the genkan. I call out, ‘I’m home…’
My wife comes out of the kitchen, her face is stained with soot, her hands brushing dust from her worn monpe trousers –
‘Welcome home,’ she says –
Home. Home. Home…
I take off my boots. I ask her, ‘Where are the children?’
‘Masaki! Sonoko!’ my wife calls. ‘Father is home!’
Father. Father…
My children do not run to greet me. My children do not smile when they see me. They stand before me now but do not speak –
Their heads shaved. Their eyebrows shaved –
‘Are you well?’ I ask each of them –
Heads bowed, they both nod –
I lift their faces to mine, lift their little faces to the light, and Masaki looks up at me now and smiles, but Sonoko still can’t look up, she still cannot smile, her eyelids swollen and her features distorted –
I force open her eyelids with my fingers –
Her eyes inflamed and festering –
The eyes of a dead fish –
Pinkeye.
I turn to my wife. ‘When did you last take her to the doctor?’
‘But I think her eyes are getting a little better,’ says my wife. ‘Two days ago, they were so swollen and so inflamed that she could not see anything at all. So I took her to the doctor then and…’
‘Maybe it’s a bacterial infection, not pinkeye?’
‘That’s what I said to the doctor.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘It’s just pinkeye.’
‘Just pinkeye!’ I shout. ‘Just look at her. She still can’t see. She could be permanently blinded! She could be blinded forever!’
‘I know,’ says my wife. ‘But the doctor said be patient.’
‘Doctors make mistakes,’ I say. ‘They usually do.’
‘But what should I do?’ asks my wife. ‘Tell…’
I ask, ‘Which doctor did you take her to?’
‘To our usual doctor,’ replies my wife.
I look at my watch. ‘I’ll take her…’
‘Take her where?’ asks my wife –
‘To a different doctor I know.’
‘What about the money…’
‘Forget the money!’
*
Through the doors of the Atago police station. Up the stairs of the Atago police station. My shirt is stuck to my back. My trousers wet behind my knees. I walk along the corridor. I walk past the banner, two metres tall and fifty centimetres wide in bright-red stitching:
Special Investigation Headquarters.
I should have collected all my belongings and made these arrangements yesterday. I would then have saved myself this –
This sudden silence. This sudden blindness –
There have been complaints about you…
But at least Hattori is not here this morning; probably up at Headquarters for the morning meeting with Kai, Kanehara, Adachi and the chief. But I’m not going to ask Takeda, Sanada, Shimoda, Nishi, Kimura or Ishida, I’m not going to ask them –
I hate them. I hate them all…
Ishida looks up. Now Ishida asks, ‘Are you here for me?’
Ishida has his orders…
‘It’s a bit early yet,’ I tell him. ‘And I’ve some things to do before we leave for Tochigi, so I’ll meet you at the ticket gate of the Asakusa Tōbu station at three o’clock this afternoon…’
Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku. Chiku-taku…
Ishida nods. Ishida says, ‘I’ve been told to buy the tickets…’
‘Well, I hope they’ve given you the money, then.’
Ishida nods again. ‘I’ve enough for three days.’
‘I won’t be needing a return ticket,’ I laugh –
But no one else laughs. No one even smiles…
Ishida just asks, ‘How much rice should I bring with me?’
‘Rice?’ I ask him. ‘Surely we’ll be bringing rice back?’
‘I heard we’ll not find an inn unless we take rice.’
‘Do you have any rice, detective?’ I ask him –
Ishida whispers, ‘I have a little at home…’
‘Then bring enough for both of us,’ I say and I turn to go –
‘Why should he take any rice for you?’ asks Kimura –
I turn back round. I ask him, ‘What did you say?’
‘I said, why should he bring any rice for you,’ repeats Detective Kimura. ‘You’re not his boss any more, are you?’
‘Maybe not now,’ I tell him. ‘And maybe not in this room. But on that train and in Tochigi, I’ll still be the senior officer…’
‘Senior officer? Really?’ snorts Detective Kimura now. ‘Well, I’d save my rice if I were you, Detective Ishida…’
I walk over to Detective Kimura and I pick up one of the telephones on the desk, one of the telephones that cannot ring, and I smash it into the side of Kimura’s face and then, as he cries out and reaches up to hold his face, I punch him in his gut and I bend his left hand back until he howls out in pain and begs me to stop as I slap him and slap him and slap him, again and again and again across his face and then I push him back onto his desk and I watch him roll onto the floor and now I lean over him and I tell him, ‘And I’d learn some manners and I’d learn some respect if I were you, Detective Kimura.’
Now I walk over to Detective Sanada and I say, ‘You said something very interesting yesterday, Detective Sanada. You said Masaoka Hisae told you that Kodaira always had gifts on him…’
Detective Sanada sweating. Detective Sanada nodding –
‘You said he had ladies’ gifts; jewellery, watches and…’
Detective Sanada nodding and saying, ‘Umbrellas.’
‘That was good work,’ I tell him. ‘Because after you said that, when I was up at Headquarters, I heard that we are going to wash another unsolved case as a possible Kodaira Yoshio job —’
I am not their head. I am not their boss…
‘Shinokawa Tatsue, seventeen years old, found raped and strangled in the basement of the Toyoko Department Store in Shibuya on the sixteenth of January this year. However, the autopsy estimated she’d been dead since late October or early November last year –
‘And guess what?’ I ask. ‘Her umbrella had been stolen.’
Again, there is no applause. But I don’t want any…
‘So if any of you want to impress your new boss,’ I tell them. ‘I suggest you go back to Masaoka, back to the Widow Okayama and back to all the other people who knew Kodaira, his family and his workmates, and you try to trace all these gifts he kept giving away –
‘Because somewhere out there in Shibuya or Shinagawa, in Toyama or Tochigi, are the belongings of our own Shiba body –
‘Excuse me,’ I tell them. ‘Your Shiba body…’
No applause. Just silence. Just blindness…
I walk over to my desk now, my former borrowed desk, and I open the drawer ready to tip out the entire contents into my old army knapsack. But the drawer of my desk is empty –
My desk has already been cleared –
I curse and I curse and I curse…
‘Inspector Hattori took all your things up to Headquarters,’ says Ishida. ‘He didn’t think you’d be coming back here again.’
I hate him. I hate him. I hate them…
I say nothing. There is nothing to say. I leave –
I hate them. I hate them…
Down the corridor. Down the stairs –
I hate them all…
Detective Nishi is standing on the steps outside Atago police station. I am looking in a mirror. Detective Nishi must have ducked out of the room while I was beating the shit out of Detective Kimura, while I was lecturing the hell out of the rest of them. I am looking in a mirror. Detective Nishi is waiting for me. I am looking in a mirror. Detective Nishi wants another word, a last and final word. I am looking in a mirror. But Detective Nishi still looks like shit. I am looking in a mirror. Nishi still looks like he hasn’t slept. I am looking in a mirror. Nishi telling me, ‘I had nothing to do with any of it…’
I laugh. ‘Had nothing to do with any of what, detective?’
‘Your demotion,’ he says. ‘All their complaints.’
I ask, ‘What complaints are they then, Nishi?’
‘Hattori’s complaints to Adachi,’ he says.
I shake my head. ‘I despise all of you.’
‘But I’m on your side,’ pleads Nishi –
On my side. On my side. My side…
I shake my head again. ‘No you’re not, and you never were.’
*
In another ruin, among another heap of rubble, with a last cigarette. Two stray dogs circle and watch me smoke, waiting for me to die. Two stray dogs in dirty coats on skinny legs, their pale tongues hanging loose from their dark mouths. The sparrow sings, the nightingale dances. This ruin, this rubble, was once a grand house and ornate garden owned by a family of Satsuma Samurai stock, a family that had once given the country ministers and generals, given her industrialists and financiers, from a house that once hosted banquets and balls, a garden that echoed to the songs of victory –
And the green fields are lovely in the spring…
Now three more stray dogs appear among the rubble and bark at the other two strays. Three more stray dogs in dirty coats on skinny legs with pale tongues and dark mouths. The five dogs form a pack, circling me. The pomegranate flowers crimson, the willows green-leafed. I watch the dogs circle closer and closer. I watch them sniff the ground. I watch them sniff the air. I watch them circle closer and closer. The first two dogs are the bravest, marching up and down before me, closer and closer. The three newcomers less certain. I put out my last cigarette. Now I pick up a stone –
And there is a new picture.
*
Through the doors of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters. Up the stairs of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters. The sudden silence. My shirt is still stuck to my back. My trousers still wet behind my knees. The sudden blindness. I walk along the corridor, the Police Arcade. I walk past the chief’s room. I shouldn’t have come here. I walk past the meeting room. I walk past Room #1. I should have stayed away. I come to Room #2. My former room –
No one will see me. No one will speak to me…
But Room #2 is empty. The Metro Arcade –
No one here. No one here…
I walk over to my desk, my former desk at the head of the room, and I open the drawer to tip out the contents into my knapsack. But the drawer of this desk is empty too –
This desk has also been cleared –
I curse. I curse again…
I go back out into the corridor to look for someone; anyone –
There’s a familiar face on the stair; a familiar face from Room #1 and Inspector Kai’s team. But this familiar face, he sees me first, he sees me first and he looks away, he looks away and he turns away, he turns away to walk away, to walk away the other way –
But he knows. He knows. He knows…
So I stop this familiar face and I bow and I apologize, and he bows back, and I bow again and I apologize again and then I ask him, ‘Where is everyone? What’s happened?’
‘Haven’t you heard?’ he asks. ‘They found Detective Fujita.’
I bow. I thank him. I excuse myself. I turn away –
I walk away. Back down the stairs –
Through the doors. I run –
I run, run, run away.
*
I take my daughter’s red geta clogs in my hand. My wife puts my daughter on my back. I carry my daughter down the garden path. I carry my daughter down the street. I carry my daughter through the mulberry fields on a shortcut to another hospital, a different doctor –
The hospital has just opened. The queue already formed –
I open my police wallet. I tell them it’s an emergency –
I shout. I threaten. I bully. I jump the queue –
The ophthalmologist is a woman –
‘My daughter can hardly open her eyes,’ I tell the doctor. ‘They’ve been like this for almost two weeks. I am concerned it’s something more serious than pinkeye, that it might be a virulent bacterial infection that could permanently damage her eyesight. I have to go away for a time and I’m worried that the situation will worsen while I am away. My wife and I are really at an utter loss…’
‘Don’t worry,’ says the lady doctor. ‘This will clear up in a —’
‘But when?’ I ask her. ‘It’s been nearly two weeks now…’
‘She smells of smoke,’ says the doctor. ‘She’s been sprayed with DDT. The smoke and DDT have aggravated her eyes…’
‘We had no choice,’ I tell her. ‘We had lice…’
‘Please don’t worry,’ says the doctor. ‘The eyes themselves haven’t actually been infected. By the time you return from your trip, I’m sure your daughter’s eyes will have completely recovered…’
‘Isn’t there anything you can give her to hurry things along?’
‘There’s an injection,’ says the doctor. ‘But it’s expensive.’
‘I have money,’ I tell her and I bow. ‘Please, doctor…’
*
Was it Senju or Adachi? They have found Detective Fujita. Adachi or Senju? Do they weep for him? Or do they laugh at him? Senju or Adachi? Is day night? Or night day? Adachi or Senju? Is black white? Or white black? Senju or Adachi? Are the men the women? Or the women the men? Adachi or Senju? Are the brave the frightened? Or the frightened the brave? Senju or Adachi? Are the strong the weak? Or the weak the strong? Adachi or Senju? Are the good the bad? Or the bad the good? Senju or Adachi? Are strikes legal? Or are strikes illegal? Adachi or Senju? Is democracy good? Or democracy bad? Senju or Adachi? Is the aggressor the victim? Or the victim the aggressor? Adachi or Senju? Are the winners the losers? Or the losers the winners? Senju or Adachi? Did Japan lose the war? Or Japan win the war? Adachi or Senju? Are the living the dead? Or are the dead the living? Senju or Adachi? Am I alive? Or am I dead…?
Was it Adachi or Senju? Senju or Adachi?
Now they have found Detective Fujita –
Adachi or Senju? Senju or Adachi?
Now they will find me –
Adachi or Senju?
But I have to take a chance; I have to take a chance that they won’t catch Ishida before he leaves Atago, that Ishida will have already left Atago and be on his way back home now for his rice; have to take a chance that Ishida will then go straight to Asakusa, that either Headquarters won’t know what time we’re set to leave Tokyo for Tochigi, or that they won’t think to send anyone to stop us –
Senju or Adachi? Adachi or Senju? Senju or Adachi…
These are the chances I take. The chances I take –
Or was it me? Was it me? Was it me?
I take as I cut and run through Tokyo –
Was it me? Was it me?
The City of the Dead –
The Shōwa Dead…
*
Baba Hiroko was found dead on the third of January this year in Tochigi Prefecture in the jurisdiction of the Kanuma police station. But Baba Hiroko was not from Tochigi Prefecture. Baba Hiroko was from Tokyo. Baba Hiroko lived at 1–9 Shin-Tsukuda Nishimachi, in Kyōbashi Ward with her mother and her uncle, Kobayashi Sōkichi.
I run through Kyōbashi Ward, looking for the street and keeping in the shadows of the old office buildings still standing. I find the street and I walk down it, looking for the address and dodging the sunlight in the empty spaces created by the bombsites –
The shadows and the sunlight, the black then the white…
I come to a battered board fence; a huge pile of rusty iron, a cabin with a glass door and a stained tin roof visible through the gaps in the wood; this place must be 1–9 Shin-Tsukuda Nishimachi –
Behind the fence, an old man in overalls stands in front of the cabin, a handkerchief around his head. I call through the fence. I tell him who I am; Inspector Minami of the Tokyo MPD. He tells me who he is; Kobayashi Sōkichi. He tells me he is Hiroko’s uncle –
I tell him why I’m here and where I’m going –
I ask if I can speak with him. He nods –
I think about her all the time…
I step through an opening in the boarding into the scrapyard. He takes off the handkerchief and wipes his neck. He shows me inside the cabin. He points to a small stool, which is the only piece of furniture in the cabin. He sits down on an empty packing case, an old colour postcard of the Itsuku-shima Shrine still tacked to the wall –
‘Me and this shack is all that’s left,’ says Mr. Kobayashi –
I stare up at the boarded ceiling, still black with winter soot, the blackboard by the window, and now I stare across at the butsudan on which a potted sakaki tree sits before three framed photographs; two are of older women, the third of a much younger woman –
‘Hiroko left here early on the morning of the thirtieth of December last year. Her mother had been evacuated to the employee apartments of the Furukawa Denki copper factory in Nikkō…’
The same company Kodaira twice worked for…
‘But because of the situation here in Tokyo and because of the better standard of living out in the country, her mother was still living up there. Hiroko wanted to spend New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day with her and she had some gifts to give her…’
‘Do you remember what these gifts were?’
‘There was a red scarf she’d knitted herself, I do remember that. Then I think there were some bits of food and what-have-you. I mean, her mother was probably eating better than us, but Hiroko saved up her rice ration for the whole month…
‘But Hiroko never arrived and then, four days later, her body was found in that field near that mountain in Nishi Katamura, Kami Tsuga-gun. In that lonely field…’
She haunts me…
‘Hiroko had been dragged across the field, her face had been beaten, she had been throttled, she had been raped and then she had been strangled with her own scarf. The murderer had then stolen all her belongings, the two hundred yen she had had with her, as well as her coat and her scarf and all the presents she had for her mother…
‘Hiroko’s mother blamed herself. Her mother felt she shouldn’t have stayed in Tochigi, that if she had returned to Tokyo then Hiroko would never have gone up to Tochigi that day, that she’d never have met the beast that did those things to her…’
‘Where is her mother now?’ I ask. ‘Not still in Tochigi…?’
‘Hiroko’s mother died of the shame and a broken heart…’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I tell him. ‘I’m very sorry…’
‘Whoever killed Hiroko, killed her mother too.’
I nod and I tell him he is right. I ask if I may pay my respects and then, for the second time today, I kneel before a butsudan —
But this time I do not ask for forgiveness –
This time I ask only for guidance –
The guidance for justice –
Justice & vengeance…
I stand back up and he thanks me for my time and he thanks me for my trouble and then he shows me back out of the cabin –
Back out into the sunlight and the scrapyard –
‘My own son is still in Mulchi,’ he says. ‘Least, that’s what they tell me. I’ve heard nothing. But, until I do hear otherwise, while he’s chopping wood on the Amur River, I’ll keep this business going so there’s something for him to come back to…’
But now Hiroko’s uncle stares across the street at the buildings going back up, and he says, ‘Then again, perhaps he’s already just another ghost…’
*
The Ginza Subway Line terminates at Asakusa station in the basement of the Matsuya Department Store. The Tōbu Line starts and finishes on the second floor of Matsuya; Ishida will be there at three o’clock. I look at my watch. Chiku-taku. I am early. I need to keep my distance for now. I come up for air out of the subway –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton…
But there is no air in Asakusa; just markets to the left, looking north, and ruins to the right, across on the other bank of the Sumida River. There is no air; the same burnt field, flat but for the black scorched concrete and the new yellow wood. No air; this place is death, always death, death before and death again now –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton…
I came here the day after the Great Kantō Earthquake; that day the whole city stank, stank of rotten apricots, and the closer I walked to Asakusa and to the winds that blew across from east of the river, the stronger the stink of apricots became –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton…
The stink of rotten apricots that was the stench of the dead, the mountains of dead lain out under a burning sky among the charred ruins on both banks of the Sumida –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton…
I stood among those corpses piled up high along the riverbanks and the body of one young boy it caught my eye, his body caked black in rags and filth, his face and hands covered in blisters and boils, I wondered where his father was, I wondered where his mother was, his brothers and his sisters, and I prayed that they were dead, better everyone was dead –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton…
Everyone dead –
Ton-ton…
Hammering then and hammering now. Better everyone was dead. Hammering then and hammering now. Better everyone was dead. Hammering then, hammering now –
Better everyone was dead…
Dead then, dead now –
Everyone dead…
Then, twenty-two years after that first fire rose up with the earth, I watched as a second fire rained down from the skies onto Asakusa and Tokyo, borne on a loud wind that swept the fire over the low half of the city, that swept half the people away in its wake –
A century of change in one night of fire…
Fires unfolding like fans, burning buildings, boiling rivers, bodies suffocated by smoke, scorched by flames –
I smelt them then. I smell them now –
That stench of rotten apricots…
Now I walk away from the Matsuya Department Store, towards the Niten Shinto Gate, onto the empty black square where the great Kannon Temple once stood, past hundreds of tiny stalls, trumpets and saxophones wailing from amplified loudspeakers –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton…
I make my way through the old clothes market, I push my way through the crowds, and I come to a row of food stalls wedged together by the side of the Asakusa Pond, the air here thick with the smell of burning oil. I stop to drink among the old soldiers –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton…
I stare out at the billboard advertisements –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton…
For the restaurants and revues –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton…
Movies and musicals –
Ton-ton…
The sun falling in black and white lines through the bamboo roof, I stare out into the face of a young boy, caked black in rags and filth, his face and hands covered in blisters and boils, he weeps pus and tears, now he raises his hand and he points his finger –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton…
Hammering then, hammering now –
Masaki, Banzai! Daddy, Banzai!
The hammering never stops –
Ton-ton. Ton-ton. Ton-ton…
*
I put my daughter on my back again and I carry her home through the mulberry fields, back towards our house but then, when we get to an old well, I put her down. I take out my handkerchief. I wash and soak it in the well. I wring it out. Then I put it over my daughter’s eyes –
‘Just until the smoke has gone,’ I tell her.
I put my daughter on my back again and I carry her home, through the gate and up the path to the door and the genkan —
‘We’re home,’ my daughter and I shout together.
I fetch some water and I go back out into the garden. I pour the water onto the flames and I put out the bonfire of bedding –
‘The smoke irritates her eyes,’ I tell my wife.
My wife bows down. My wife apologizes –
‘Don’t,’ I tell her. ‘You had no choice.’
My wife bows again. My wife thanks me again. My wife says, ‘I am very sorry you had to take her to the hospital. You must be tired now. I have made you some breakfast…’
‘Not now,’ I say. ‘There are some things I must tell you…’
‘Daddy’s going away again,’ sings my daughter.
My wife begins to scold my daughter –
‘Sonoko is right,’ I tell my wife. ‘But I am going away because I have been demoted. I have lost my command and I have lost my rank. I have been ordered to go to Tochigi Prefecture as part of the present investigation. However, it is only for a few days and I would hope to be back by Tuesday or Wednesday. But, when I return, I will then be transferred to a local police station and I don’t know where that will be or for how long –
‘I have been told that the Public Safety Division of GHQ has been asking questions about my previous record and career, about my suitability as a police officer. It is possible that my name will appear on the next Purge Directive. It is certain that this will mean dismissal. It is also possible that this might even mean a trial and imprisonment. Even execution…’
Now I bow low. ‘I am truly sorry to have to tell you this…’
My wife bows deeply too, her shoulders shaking, her tears falling on the tatami, and she sobs, ‘I am sorry. This is all my fault.’
‘The fault is mine,’ I tell her. ‘Don’t reproach yourself…’
‘I am sorry,’ she sobs again. ‘I have been a poor wife…’
‘Please don’t cry,’ I ask her. ‘And please don’t reproach yourself any further. You have looked after our children and you have maintained our house under difficult circumstances. We continue to face a difficult and uncertain future and so we must both be strong for our children. We must both try our very hardest…’
My wife nods her head. My wife bows her head.
‘Did you get the money out of the post office?’
‘We’ve queued every day, but still nothing…’
I take out an envelope from my jacket pocket. I tell her, ‘There’s some food in my backpack, some rice and some vegetables, and this money will be enough until I get back.’
My wife bows. My wife thanks me –
We are both on our knees –
Get off your knees!
I get up from my knees. I walk through to the other room where our butsudan alcove is. I kneel down before our butsudan, before the photographs of her parents and mine, her sister and my brother. I lean forward on my knees to light three sticks of incense. I tap the metal bowl three times. I kneel back down before the altar –
Now I pray to my father, my mother and my brother –
To apologize for my behaviour and for my failings –
To beg for their forgiveness and their guidance –
To ask for their help and for their protection –
I lean forward on my knees again. I place the envelope of money on the butsudan. I place the bag of food before the altar –
The air is heavy with the smell of incense –
The smell of smouldering bedding –
My eyes sting. My eyes smart…
The smell of DDT –
My own tears.
*
I am late now and the Asakusa station is crowded, dark and hot. Every station. Hundreds, maybe thousands of passengers in queues for tickets which take hours, even days to get, tickets for trains which take hours, even days to arrive. Every station, every train. The whole of Japan, the survivors, the lucky ones, on the move, on the move –
I look to the left and to the right. In front then behind me –
No men from Headquarters. No men in uniforms…
I push my way through the crowds. I push my way up the stairs to the second floor, towards the platforms and the trains –
I look to the left and to the right. Behind me then –
I see Ishida up ahead. Ishida at the ticket gate –
Does he know they found Detective Fujita?
Ishida bows. Ishida hands me my ticket –
Does he know? Does he care…?
I hurry us along. We show our train tickets and our police notebooks at the gate. Quick! We walk briskly along the platform. We pass the long string of run-down third-class carriages for the unprivileged Losers. Quick! We come to the second-class hard-seat carriage, reserved for the privileged Losers like us, our carriage –
Quick! Quick! Quick! Quick! Quick!
I glance back down the platform –
No one chasing after us…
Ishida and I board the train –
No one here waiting…
The conductor has kept two seats for us opposite each other; Ishida facing back towards the third-class carriages where the passengers are packed in, sitting, standing and hanging off the steps while I am facing forward to the Victors’ carriage, the two reserved carriages for Victors Only which, for once, are full of GIs returning to their Tochigi postings from leave in Tokyo –
The whistle blows…
A conductor in a shabby brown Tōbu uniform stands guard on the connecting door to the first of the Victors’ carriages, a steady stream of Japanese people still trying to steal a seat through there –
Each time the conductor in his shabby suit stops them –
The locomotive starts to move. The wheels start to turn…
‘For Americans only,’ the conductor tells them –
We are pulling out of the Asakusa Tōbu station…
I wait for one of them to argue back with him –
We are crossing the Sumida River now…
But the Japanese all retreat silently –
I am getting away, getting away…
The laws of victory and defeat –
I have escaped. For now…
The wheels that turn and turn again.
*
I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. The first part of the journey, to Sugito, is not long but the train is slow and the carriage is hot. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. Ishida and I do not speak. We close our eyes –
Please let my daughter’s eyes be open now…
But I do not sleep. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I listen to the railway announcements and the running feet as we stop at stations, then the short, sharp whistle of the locomotive. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. From station to station, whistle to whistle –
Kita-Senju. Soka. Kasukabe…
Until the train finally pulls into the Tōbu Sugito station and we fight our way out of the carriage and onto the platform. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. Then we cross the bridge to the other platform to wait for the Tōbu Nikkō Line train –
To Kodaira country…
It is a two-hour wait on another platform crammed from end to end with men and women, their children and their belongings. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. Many with screaming babies strapped to their backs, others with the silent bones of the dead in boxes around their necks, returnees from Manchuria, refugees in their own country. I itch and I scratch –
Gari-gari…
Ishida and I find a small space at one end of the platform in which to crouch down with our knapsacks to wait, to wait and to wait, to itch and to scratch, gari-gari. Ishida still doesn’t speak and I still don’t talk, so again we both close our eyes, we both close our eyes until I sense the people on the platform moving, rising and picking up their children and their belongings, their babies and their bones at the approach of a train, the sound of a whistle and the sight of steam –
Every station. Every train. Every station. Every train…
The people on the platform trying to board the train before it has stopped, before its passengers can get off, pushing and shoving, shouting and arguing, onto the steps, through the windows –
Every station. Every train. Every station…
There are no reserved seats on this train. Every man, woman and child for themselves. Ishida and I get onto the footplate at the end of one of the carriages and we push our way inside –
Every train in the land…
Ishida and I stand crushed in the passageway outside the toilet, the toilet itself filled with an entire family and their possessions, as the train jolts forward, this train that once carried only tourists and day-trippers to such sights as the Shinkyō Bridge and the Tōshōgū Shrine, Lake Chūzenji and the Kegon Falls, this train that now carries only the starving and the lost –
The lucky ones.
I stand wedged between Ishida and a young girl. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari. I try to turn my head to see out of the window, to find some air and to watch for the stations, but all I can see are lice crawling over the scalp of the young girl in front of me, in and out of her hair they crawl, burrowing and then surfacing, surfacing and then burrowing again, in and out of her hair. I itch and I scratch. Gari-gari.
Maybe thirty minutes later, the train jolts over joints and begins to slow down once again. But there is no announcement –
I turn to Ishida. I ask him, ‘Where are we now?’
Ishida strains to see. He says, ‘Fujioka.’
In the small of Ishida’s back…
The train shudders to a stop in the station. People push and shove again, shouting and arguing as they struggle to get on and off –
In the small of his back, something cold and metallic…
I move away from Ishida. I itch and I itch. I move away from the young girl and her lice. I stand by a window, finally able to breathe, to scratch myself, gari-gari, gari-gari, gari-gari…
The locomotive begins to pull out of the station. Ishida moves closer to me. Now Ishida stands beside me again –
The sun is setting. It is getting dark…
Detective Ishida tells me we should get off the train at Shin-Kanuma station, that we should be there in another hour or so, that he knows the way to the Kanuma police station, that he has already looked it up on a map, that they will be expecting us, that they will have reserved an inn for us for tonight –
They will be waiting for us…
But I have also looked at maps. I have looked at maps of my own. I tell him we’re not getting off the train at Shin-Kanuma station, that we are not going to Kanuma police station –
Not to their inn. Not tonight –
Where they’ll be waiting…
‘Ienaka,’ I tell him. ‘That’s where we’ll get off.’
*
Ienaka is about fifteen kilometres before Kanuma. Ienaka is the closest station to the house where the mother and daughter of the Widow Okayama live. Ienaka is also near to the field in which the body of Baba Hiroko was found on the third of January –
But it is night now. It is dark here…
Ishida and I pass through the ticket gates and walk out of the station into the deserted town. No markets here –
No one waiting for us here…
Nothing here but the silhouettes of dark mountains and the hints of hidden trees looming up over the town and leering down at us as I squat down to open my knapsack and take out my notebook, Ishida beginning to mumble about the lateness of the hour, about it being too late to call on the mother and daughter of the Widow Okayama, too late to visit the field in which Baba Hiroko was found, too late to find an inn for the night –
Everything too late…
‘Here it is,’ I tell him and show him the address of an inn in my notebook and its location on my map. Now I lead Ishida up the slope out of town towards the address. We find it easily –
The Beautiful Mountain Inn…
The detached hotel faces the road and there is still a light on in the porch, moths smashing into the glass which covers the bulb, mosquitoes biting into our foreheads and our necks as we open the door to the inn and apologize to the maid for the late and abrupt nature of our unannounced visit, offering her some of the rice Detective Ishida has brought from his home –
Dark outside, dark inside…
The maid scurries off with the rice and our papers and returns with an older woman who thanks us for the rice and copies down our details. The woman tells us that we are too late for an evening meal, that these days they need a day’s notice to buy and prepare meals, that we are also too late to use the bath, that they heat the bath water only when they have a day’s notice and then only once a day –
No bath. No late night snacks. No sake. No beer…
‘But there will be breakfast,’ she tells us.
The older woman then instructs the younger maid to show us to our room, our room which the woman assures us is the best room that they have, and so we follow the young maid down a dim and humid corridor of unlit alcoves and shuttered windows –
Now the maid unlocks and slides open a door –
Now the maid switches on the light –
And I wish she had not…
The screens have been shredded to strips and the tatami are crawling with bugs, the mosquitoes eating us raw as Ishida and I sit down at a low table beneath a small electric bulb to count the cockroaches, the maid putting out our futons and our bedding, apologizing for the smell and the temperature but assuring us it is better, much better, to keep the windows closed at this time of year –
‘Thank you,’ we say as she bows to wish us goodnight.
*
In insect silence, they gather in the genkan of our house to watch me leave. This is defeat. They watch me put on my boots. This is defeat. They follow me out of the door of our house. This is defeat. They follow me down the garden path of our house. This is defeat. They stand at the gate to our house. This is defeat. They watch me walk away from our house and they wave. This is defeat. They watch me walk down our street and they wave. This is defeat. Every time I turn around. This is defeat. Every time I turn around. This is defeat…
‘Please remember us. Please don’t forget us, Daddy…’
For my wife, for my daughter and for my son –
Defeat. Defeat. Defeat. Defeat…
For my father and for my mother –
Defeat. Defeat. Defeat…
For my elder brother –
Defeat. Defeat…
This defeat that lasts for every minute of every hour of every day of every week of every month of every year –
I am one of the survivors…
This is surrender. This is occupation –
One of the lucky ones…
This is defeat.
*
We have washed our faces and we have pissed. We have taken off our trousers and taken off our shirts. We have said goodnight and switched off the electric bulb. Now I lie awake and wait for Ishida to fall asleep. Until I hear his breathing begin to slow –
Until I hear him sleeping deeply now –
It is oven hot and pitch black…
I turn slowly and quietly onto my chest. I move off my futon and onto the tatami mats. I crawl with the bugs and the cockroaches across the floor, across the room towards his knapsack. Now I ease open the bag and I search around inside –
Something cold, metallic…
I take out the gun. It is a 1939 army-issue pistol. It is loaded. Now I raise the pistol in the dark. I aim and I point it at Ishida –
I could kill him here. I could kill him now…
But I lower the pistol. I put the gun back inside his knapsack. I close the bag. I crawl back across the floor, back across the tatami to my own futon and my own knapsack. Now I open the bag –
I have to sleep. I have to sleep…
I take out the pills that Senju gave me. Not Calmotin tonight. Senju had no Calmotin. But Senju has a hoard –
Veronal. Muronal. Numal…
Senju always has a stock –
I do not count.